So my life isn't that boring, yet. Let's just take a cursory glance at a typical day in the life of an unemployed AlieMalie:

6AM Groggily curse rooster who is trespassing with threat that he's one cockadoodledooOoOOOoooo away from being that night's dinner because he freaks out my cats who then go tearing through the house because THE MONSTER! IT WILL KILL US! My cats are definitely not of the genius variety.

9AM Wake UP. I have an alarm set to wake my sorry butt up every morning to keep myself in the habit of the professional who'll eventually rejoin the workforce. Hit snooze a couple of times for the psychological thrill of being in control of at least something! I rule you, Mr Alarm Clock. Check email on the BlackBerry to see if anyone's expressed interest yet as well as to read the newest email from the Capitol Hill listserv regarding jobs in hopes to be the FIRST! PERSON! to apply for said jobs if I fit their qualifications - or even if I don't, but it looks interesting. Check the NYTimes, CNN and Sydney Morning Herald for headlines. If nothing big, leave main news reading for later. If big, breaking story, read it.

9:30AM Kick Norton off the bed for gnawing on my toes. My toes are not, sadly, edible. Sorry, Nort Nort.

10AM Random wandering around house in search of breakfast - typically an orange, apple or muffin. Make plan for day regarding where and when will camp out for job search.

10:30AM Head to gym, work out.

Noon Camp out at random coffee house, fire up lap top and give myself at the very least an hour to read the day's news. After logging on to the laptop, the first sites I'll check are, in order (and yes, I AM a partisan): Huffington Post, NY Times, CNN, San Antonio Express-News and Politico. Given the jobs that I'm applying for, it would be ridiculous NOT to be up to date on the current state of affairs both here in the US as well as globally. From the local, state, national and global economy to policy decisions, reversal of policy, what different special interests are saying regaring all of these things and what they would prefer to see, if different. And this isn't just because I'm needing to be up to speed because of the sort of jobs I'm applying for, but because I'm genuinely interested in these issues.

1PM Start daily job search. Read through list serv emails again, find the jobs that I'm interested in, edit cover letter/resume and submit. Log into USAJobs.gov and search jobs. Search craigslist. Check to see if the Smithsonian has any new openings. Browse union jobs (best! benefits! ever!). Check local and state government websites of places I wouldn't mind going to to see if they have any new postings. This goes on and on.

9PM Head home to make dinner.

10PM Crash into bed to watch a movie borrowed from friends.

Midnight Sleep.

On the weekends, this changes to involve a few hours less of job searching and involves a little more face time with some friends. If the week has been particularly brutal, sometimes I'll take a break for a day during the week and head to a local middle school where a friend of mine teaches orchestra and help him out. The kids love me, and I feel productive in adding something, anything, to their education.

Is this absolutely everything that goes on in my life? No. Do I see friends during the week? Yes. Sometimes I even have a phone interview worked in there. I do browse social networking sites when I need a break, and I BS with friends there. This past week I spent almost every evening volunteering for an unnamed organization that is setting up shop in DC - I completed a time sensitive spreadsheet and was rewarded with a personal call from their new Political Director. Mission: Name Recognition with National Staff. Accomplished.

It's not like I'm just whiling away the time.

It's been a tough month, February.

I felt like I was spinning my wheels - spending countless hours reading job descriptions and qualifications and then writing pertinent cover letters and applying for the jobs. Only to hear nothing back. I've heard back regarding three applications which is depressing seeing that I've applied for a hundred or so positions. That's pretty lame. The worst is the organization that asked me for an interview, asked my availability, and then never got back to me. How terrible is that? I checked and rechecked my email back to them giving them my availability to see if it was something I said, but no, can't find anything. What the hell.

Things seem to be picking up a little bit, I'm starting to get more bites on my resume and it feels like it's no longer just a one way street with me applying applying applying, but it's still slow going. I finally sucked it up and did my taxes because I have almost no money left - granted, I did live without working for four months on what I'd saved up over the course of the campaign, so that's something to be proud of, at least I can be exceptionally frugal when I need to be. Anyway, I'm getting a good chunk of change back in a return, more than I was expecting because I'm finally getting the rebate that Bush had passed last year as a "stimulus" for the economy. I never got mine and never had time to investigate as to why. Ah well, it's coming tacked on to my return this year. I just wish someone would hire me, give me a chance and I can guarantee I won't disappoint.

Other than that, it's still pretty depressing around here. I've tried getting in touch with some of my friends that live here, and have only really had luck with three, the rest of them can go screw themselves for all I care. I know that's a terrible thing to say, but it's true. I have no time for fair weather friends.

My relationship with my mother is faltering, too. I think that she is using her relationship with HER mother as a model for her relationship with me which doesn't include much communication, and the communication it does include is email based. I see no reason to have an email-centric relationship with my mother when I live in the same damn city. Ah, there's so much more to this, too, but I don't feel like going into it in much detail.

In better news, I've now seemed to reduce my occurrence of migraines to about four or five per year. This is a great reduction from when I was getting them a minimum of once a month. Mind you, the ones I have now are worse pain wise, but at least they're not as often. That said, I have one now, which sucks.

Other than this things are ok. I know this seems to be yet another one of my depressing posts, but compared to the last one, I'd say we're a rung up on the happy ladder. I have my up and down days, but we're moving in a generally upward trend; though the first thing I'm doing as soon as I get health insurance is seeing a therapist.

(And I, again, apologize for not blogging much. I don't have internet at home and quite often when I'm in a wifi spot, I'm solely focused on applying for jobs. You can follow me on twitter though. I update that way too much via crackberry.)

I'm going to go head on out, try to get some exercise, sunshine, fresh air and take some photos. Y'all have fun.

I can't continue holding this together. I got an email back saying that an organization (that shall remain nameless) wanted an interview with me and could I please respond with my availability? I did and have heard nothing back. I've probably applied for well over 100 jobs and have only gotten three responses. One interview ask (same one as above) and two confirmations that they've received my resume.

I don't know what to do. I can't live on nothing.

So it's common knowledge that I'm applying to a million jobs pretty much everyday. I march up to the Starbucks up the street from my house (because they have free! internet and I'm cheap), plant myself in one of their comfy chairs and spend hours looking at job descriptions, deciding if I qualify for and like the job, and then head into gmail to attach my cover letter and resume. Sometimes, the job description asks that the applicant submit a writing sample as well, and honestly? I don't do serious writing well. At least not on policy. Well, I have a lot of qualifications to this. I can write an excellent paper on anything political science related, except it'll be 30 pages long. And I'm not sure the Chief of Staff of any office wants to read something on the Hungarian Integration into the European Union. Or Romanian Fiscal Policy. Unless, of course, they sit on the Foreign Relations Committee, but I haven't come across any job postings from them - yet. Cross your fingers.

Anyway, so this is what I'm struggling with in my job search: The Writing Sample. A part of me thinks that I could totally land a job submitting one of my Europe, Morocco & Canada stories because I would have the CoS rolling on the floor with laughter in some parts. Painfully funny. And they show I can write. But then again, I think of all those crazy staffers who left their sense of humor somewhere in rural West Virginia on their trek to DC from Home State.

But I could try. I would totally leave an impression. And either nail the job or have all my emails blocked from any email address on Capitol Hill.