Depressed I'm not going to South by Southwest,

Image by cackhanded via Flickr

For most of 2008, I had plans to attend South by Southwest Interactive for the first time. Initially as an employee of CNET, then as an employee of VuPal, then as a co-founder of GameJabs. (It's been an eventful year, employment-wise.) For various business and economic reasons, all those plans fell through, and as I search for my next day-job, I have to be more conservative with my discretionary funds.

Theoretically, I could go to SXSWi on the pretense of finding a day-job, but I'm not truly convinced that any job I'd find there would be different from most of the other jobs I've already found for which I'm qualified. As to why I'm having trouble getting one of those jobs? I don't want to take a drastic hit to my standard of living. As a Web content/product/social media guy, most of the work for me is in New York, Los Angeles or San Francisco. Thus, I'd either need to telecommute from Louisville (where my wife, family, and insanely affordable 3-bedroom house are employed and/or located) or I'd need to be paid far more than anyone is willing to pay me.

Paying several hundred dollars to attend an event that help me discover jobs I can't accept is bad business, which is a shame, because I'd very much benefit from the educational and networking opportunities to be found there. I'll just live vicariously through the 15 or so friends and colleagues that are attending, and hope that if any of them find out someone is looking for a kickass, SEO-savvy writer/editor/strategist, that they think of me.

Alas.

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