Infinitely Employable

Holy shit, we’re out of money!

…Just like that after two months of, pretty much, constant spending, getting the boat ready for living off the grid on the hook, we found ourselves (once again) in the familiar predicament of being out of funds so it was time to “beat the street”.

It’s always been one of our great orders of pride that the two of us are employable, meaning, it doesn’t matter where we go, we can work at making our lives comfortable and, being as though we don’t require a whole hell-of-a-lot to do that, we in turn don’t require a bunch of money for that purpose. Not only that but we’re both smart, well educated, good looking, well spoken and with a wide variety of workable skills, in other words, infinitely employable…

…That is, if there’s employment to be had.

As for me, (James) the things I’ve done to support my (not so) lavish life style while we’ve been underway these last 14 years have taught me a great deal about what it means to be employable. I mean, looking the part is important and all but convincing a potential employer that it’s amazing that they ever got along without you takes a certain level of skill that takes years and 100’s of interviews to refine. Really, it’s all about your motivation and running out of PB&J is a powerful motivating factor to say the least.

After we scraped the last of the peanut butter on to our (slightly stale) .99 cent wheat loaf this past Monday and then didn’t get the call back from the lame-assed local temp agency, my need for employment skills kicked into high gear!

First off I had to look like I wanted to work, so with a little help from Dena with our trusty buzz-clippers I went from…

The salty sailor with the 50 yard stare to…

Employable Guy!

… Able to enter any business on the planet and convince them that they need his invaluable skills.

…And then I walked.

I walked two miles to the library where I made 20 copies of my highly desirable, lofty, yet one page resume’ and worked my way back to the boat passing out that impressive yet non-presumptuous  document to every business that tickled my fancy.

I went to four coffee houses introducing myself as the greatest (Seattle trained) barista in the world, three nightclubs as the best FOH sound and lighting tech that they’ve ever worked with, three marine hardware distributors boasting of my skills as a top level sales expert, two yacht brokers exhorting the same, and one summer production company gasconading my talents as a manager of all stages.

Then I drug my sweaty ass back to the boat, opened up my computer, and went to craigslist where the very first ad that came up in the employment section read something like this…

DOCK MASTER NEEDED!

Immediate opening for a full time, year around marina manager.
Must have experience with the boating industry and be able to work
with computers…

Holy crap, that’s me!

I sent an email with my resume’ attached and within ten minutes I got a reply with a scheduled interview for the next morning.

Well, I have been the dock master of the Three Belles Marina in Niantic, Connecticut, for a week now and the job is awesome.  It’s fun, the money’s good, the people I work with seem to like their jobs, you have to admit, I’m kind of perfect for it, and one of the best parts is the fact that I get to ride my bike 14 miles, round trip to and from the marina everyday from New London. Not only do I get to work in my industry of choice but I’m going to look and feel great doing it!

Being infinitely employable has its advantages.