Here we go again

   It's a new year. O freakin' goody. I hate it when the holidays are over. Cleaning up from any party is depressing enough but trying to ignore a whole upcoming winter while I'm at it makes things tougher. It felt really wierd stopping work in the sense that my rhythm got thrown off. Admittedly, I didn't have much of one to begin with because my "schedule" is erratic by definition. I am a part time substitute teacher, at least for this school year. New Year same mid life crisis. I may have mentioned that I recently completed a couple of grant writing courses at Camden County College. I was hoping that maybe that would lead to some other work in my local district but so far I've hit a lily white brick wall.
    The floundering continues, dammit. I made the mistake of thinking I was getting somewhere. There were hints, which of course, weren't rude enough for me to notice. The first was from a great book I read called "The Encore Career Handbook". It's about people like me trying to figure out what the hell to do with themselves after the end of a career. It describes the second career thing as more of a process that could include several flops along the way. Well that sucks.
   There was another hint from of all people, me. While I was taking the grant writing class from Camden County College, I did ask my professor about our neighborhood. We are lucky in that we aren't dodging bullets to get into our school but our district is underfunded. How do I fill out these applications to compete with inner cities? The advice I got was to focus on the good the award could do for the district. This sounded like good advice to me so I took that under advisement and moved on.
   I've also noticed at least two other districts near me have received grants from the Department of Education. Since completing the classes I've let evryone with two brain cells to rub together know that I'm a C.P.A. and available to help write grants. I was flat out informed by my district that "We're not interested". I was even blocked from talking to the district business manager! I finally had to go around the business office altogether and spoke to the School Principal. She was at least kind enough to take time to speak to me honestly. Our district doesn't have much success with grants which explains the attitude I got.
   This was disappointing and frustrating to say the least. It's not that I was expecting someone to magically poof me a job pr se but maybe I had a bit more emotionally invested in the possibilities. So now what? I wish I knew.