Hello All,

My wife is tired of hearing me complain about the apparent injustices in the employment market, so I'll direct it here.  After applying for a plethora of jobs, the only one who offered me employment was a paratransit bus company who enabled me to obtain a Class "C" driver's license with a passenger endorsement.  The pay is an insult when one considers all the responsibility involved.  I took it out of necessity in order to help keep our ship from sinking-- that was nearly three years ago.  In order to try and make ends meet, my wife took early Social Security benefits. It will be necessary for me to work past age 66 before taking Social Security so as to receive enough to make the monthly mortgage payments.  That being said...

In the interm I have continued to seek other employment with disappointing results.   One application was for assistant registrar at the local community college.  My interview before a panel of three went as well as I could have expected, but I never heard from them again.  Since then all applications have failed produce an interview.  One position for which I was the most qualified was Museum Educator with the Forest Preserve District of the county.  They wanted an individual with either a degree in history or education-- I have both!  The cover letter that accompanied my credentials was among the best that I had ever written.   But I didn't even get a call for an interview.  As this post is being written I have applied for the position of Senior Outreach Services Associate with the library in whose district I reside.  The two main requirements are a university degree and a Class C driver's license to drive the bookmobile.  I applied three weeks ago, and so far no contact has been forth coming for an interview.  This position would pay $1,000 more a month than my present job ($32,000 vs $20,000), and from that perspective would solve all our monetary obligations, and allow us to put a sizeable amount aside each month.

What I have suspected for the past four years most probably centers around two main issues-- my age (now the back side of 64) and that such local-government positions are rigged.  They already know who they are going to hire (usually family members or friends of friends), and they only advertise the job vacancies to fulfill the legal requirements.  Those who had the decency to reply to me concerning my applications in the past pretty much said the same thing in their letters to avoid any trace of age discrimination-- "Your credentials are very impressive; however, we chose one whose qualifications more closely matched that for which we were seeking."  So as the days tick by, checking my answering machine and e-mails, I am more and more drawn to resurrecting Plan B which would involve self-employment and not being dependent on the whims of someone else.  In fact...

Plan B would have the potential of generating as much income as the library position which I am presently seeking while working a third of the time (14 hours vs 37.5 hours) and therefore much more for the same amount of hours.  I have considered giving piano lessons for some years now, but have not gone much past the planning stage.  In the past month I have painted the living room and had the half-bathroom fixed, which would be used by students.  My neighborhood has not had a piano teacher in nearly 20 years and with the advent of the computer age it's possible to provide all the information inexpensively via a website.   My hesitation has been the thought of having people continually coming into my home; however, the thought of driving a bus and all the hassles associated with it, for more years (provided that continue to pass the yearly physicals), has given me a renewed impetus to initiate a change in livelihood.  20 students (10 hours) would provide as much income as I presently earn from the bus company.  Guess what...

Even if the library job comes my way, I'll take it and I still plan to create a website for piano instruction and advertise it from my front yard.  Fourteen hours of piano instruction a week would equal what I would earn from the library.  Either way I plan to start by getting the first student, and giving any lessons on the weekend while still driving a bus during the week.  Should the demand for piano instruction prove successful, I'll become a full-time piano teacher.  So the thought of this gives me hope that I am not necessarily stuck in my present quandary, and that the solution to my dilemna is within my own means to solve.  The key to obtaining piano pupils is dependent on a website that will impress upon parents the ultimate benefits that can be derived from piano/music instruction for their children.

Thanks for reading this.  Sounding off provides its own form of therapy.

Mike Yugovich in Northern Illinois