Lo di mi mejor esfuerzo. Made several copies of my book in mini form to bring with as leave behinds. I emailed every ad agency and design firm in and around Alicante. A good number of 'em, maybe 25. Randomly popped into two offices just to drop off my book and presentarme a ustedes. One guy gave me gruff. Asked me why I'd be wasting my time in Spain trying to find work. He was an asshole en forma pura. Told him my sappy story about it being my dream to work in an ad shop in his country. The guy le importó un pimiento. Had two informational interviews to find out their hiring sitch. As for them all: they weren't hiring. Nor could they give me freelance work, because they only had enough work for the insiders. Applied to por lo menos 30 jobs on LinkedIn cualquier city in Spain. Got one official interview out of the bunch. Was over Skype for a gig in Barcelona. I reeeeeeeally wanted it. Did hours of research and even gave the company a SWOT analysis. Also weeded and worked through their Web site. Hit every damn link and gave my two to 10 cents on how they can do it mejor. Thought this would put me in front. Nope. Didn't get the gig. Tweeted, Facebooked, and blogged about "the struggle." Via FB, I received a connection from a FB friend, de quien no había hablado en cuanto tiempo, desde los días en Mizzou. A friend of hers lives/works in Barcelona, and she helped connect us through LinkedIn. He is definitely a good person to know. A big time pep talker. Which is what I needed. Knowing another American over in Spain witnessing the economic crisis, telling me not to give up. He put some fuego abajo mis pies. Since then I've been working on my own pagina de web para que el mundo pueda ver mi trabajo. It's called Sol Flake Publicidad, a name I came up for myself back in Alaska when I was thinking freelance. Now at it again. Just gotta get a biz card printed to hand out. We'll see what poor business wants to hire out an American in this crisis. Doubt any. Vale la pena. But after this I literally did it all. Yeah I didn't make a trip out to Madrid or to Barcelona to knock on doors. I figured the LinkedIn search sufficed considering I didn't have the time or the money to just skip class and hop a train.
I have less than three months left before my flight back to the home country. I'm not throwing in the toalla quite yet.
