The Resume Dance, Part 2

I seem to remember at some point swearing to myself (and most likely, to other people out loud, possibly after a few beers)that I would never work in an office. Ever ever ever. Of course this was after a short (10 hour) day working outside on the Marblehead waterfront in June. The idea of sitting in the same place for 7 hours a day, every day seemed alien to me. This was also before I got tired of fighting production companies tooth and nail over issues like overtime and turnaround. Basically the whole rift between Production and Crew boils down to this: do you really want to be around a condor rigged and operated by some over-eager kid who is working for practically nothing and has been operating on less than 5 hours of sleep a night for the past two weeks?
I guess a lot of people don't mind things like that, but I do, so I don't miss that aspect of the business. In other ways, it wasn't that much different than working in an office anyway. Drive to work, drink coffee, do some stuff, eat lunch, find ways to stay out of trouble.
A few months after I officially turned in my Union card, I went to a Christmas party thrown by the main crew booking agent for the area. People kept asking me if I minded dropping out of the business and I said no. It's true. I like having to show up to work at a reasonable hour and at the same time every day. I like knowing that I can expect to go home at the same time every day. My desk is always in the same place. I never have to drive around in circles at 5am, cursing Mapquest, half-assed production generated directions or the Massachusetts roads.
But then again,
I grew up with a mother who worked at the same place as a secretary for 20 years. It made her miserable and stressed out. She worked alone in her office a lot of nights and weekends to get everything done. And recently, when I was talking to her about my current job, I let my salary slip out and she told me she was earning that when she retired. In one way it made me feel a little better, she managed to raise two kids alone on what I make now as a married adult. On the other hand, I know for a cold hard fact that in addition to death and taxes, inflation is the other constant in life. So what I make now is OK to live on, but we need to save serious $$$ if we are going to buy a house. We always rented.
So I'm always looking to earn more money. Which brings me to a Catch-22 that I'm sure a lot of people are living with: Your current job is OK. You can pay your bills, buy groceries and have enough left over to go to the movies. But it's not what you went to school for, it seems like everyone you know is making tons of money doing something else and you really don't like having to commute almost three hours every day. But you've heard about people getting fired because someone looked at their internet activity at work and saw they were looking for a job online. You clicked onto one of those MSN.com job advice articles and found out you were doing everything wrong. You might get a job interview eventually, but how will you handle being offered a new job without pissing off your old one? And here's one for the ladies, what do you do when you know that at your current job, you could never afford daycare, but you are trying to have children and job search at the same time? Who will hire you if they think you might drop out for maternity leave (assuming they cover it) nine months after you're hired?
Stay tuned!

The Resume Dance, Part 2