giving in

Kirsten and I arrived in Wellington with the intent of getting short-term jobs (for a few months) and then moving on, traveling around the country.
Now, granted, I perhaps haven't been looking for a job with the fervent dedication some would say I should. But I've been looking.
(One of my favorite moments in Wellington came when I went in to put my name on the lease for our apartment. I told the rental agent I had no job, and she asked what I was qualified in. I told her I was a journalist. She talked out loud to herself as she wrote down, "Not qualified in anything."
The plan is to do some free-lance writing while I'm here. Hopefully eventually even make some money at it. But for now, I'm going to have to get some sort of nothing job for a little money while I try to set up a few stories.
I finally broke down yesterday and signed up with a temp agency. One of the few things working at a newspaper for four years does qualify you for, other than writing, is typing fast. The lady lit up after giving me a typing test and seeing my speed.
It also gives me more motivation to find something else - waiting tables, anything. Anything where I don't have to dress up and sit in a cubicle. Technically, the last four years at the paper I was working in a windowless office at a cubicle, but there were key differences. For one, I almost never had to wake up before 10 a.m., and often didn't have to wake up until much later. I also wore jeans into the office 90 percent of the time. Most of my days were broken up by going out to a college campus to talk with athletes or coaches, although there were the bad days when I was sitting around waiting for someone to call me back who was out of town.
And then every now and again I got paid to go to sporting events and eat food someone else was paying for.
Come to think of it, that's the kind of job I need to find.