The title of this blog post might imply that I have a new cat or, at the very least, that I might be delusional and am attempting small talk with members of the feline kingdom. As blogworthy as those two ideas are, I have not lost the few marbles I have left. I just feel it’s time to catch the few of you up on my life, and why I’ve been silent for the last few months. Here it is in a nutshell.

I was really busy at work the first part of the year. I’d been working on a product release that was overdue. We finally released to great fanfare, but a bit too late to change the company’s performance for the fiscal year. A couple of weeks later, much to my surprise, I was laid off, along with 129 similarly surprised other people worldwide. I put up a brave front while simultaneously starting to think about the body parts I might have to sell in order to keep the house if I didn’t get another job before my severance ran out.

Thanks to some serious networking, I was interviewing within two weeks. Six weeks later, thanks to a recommendation from my former boss, I had a job offer in hand and retained possession of my vital organs. What did I learn? Job hunting has changed significantly since the last time I had to look for a job.

The last time I found myself (sorry, Shakespeare) from employment untimely RIFed, the only thing you could do was spend hours at the Texas Employment Commission, standing in a series of lines to get your unemployment benefits set up. Then you had to update your resume, and print copies of the resume on nice, conservative paper stock with matching envelopes.

You got on the phone to call old colleagues and friends, you scoured the paper, subscribed to snail mail job lists, and you never left the house, unless you owned an answering machine. In short, you mailed shit out, and you either received a rejection letter or an interview. After the interview, you either received a rejection letter or an offer.

Today, you can search for a job in your underwear. Wait, that implies jobs are hiding in your Victoria Secrets. If that’s the case, you need not have a resume. But I digress. Let me try this again. Ahem…Today, job hunting is like computer dating — every neurotic, excruciating part of computer dating. You fill out the form, make yourself look good, press “Submit,” and wait. Eventually you’ll get a call, which is either a phone interview or a screening call during which the phone interview is set up. If there’s mutual interest, you get to set up the face-to-face date interview.

So you get all excited, and you put on your best outfit to meet your potential new girlfriend boss. You meet each other, smile, sit and have some small talk, and then you talk about how you would be the perfect spouse employee.

After your date interview, you go home and send a followup email detailing how perfect you are for each other. Within a day or two, you have heard nothing. You start to wonder, “Is it too early to call? I don’t want to seem like a Stage 5 Clinger. Why, God? Why won’t they call?” Then you get a call, but it’s to arrange a date to meet the parents management team.

Realize that, much like ABC’s “The Bachelorette,” you’re dating interviewing with multiple suitors companies, which introduces a bit more stress. Which will pick you? Which will you pick? Do you pick the first one who asks, or wait for something better? Can you even afford to turn any of them down? After all, you’re well over 35 unemployed, ya know.

As someone who actually gave up computer dating (and, pretty much, dating in general) before meeting Lindsey, you can see how this could have gone to hell in a hand basket rather quickly, landing me in a tub full of ice and a body devoid of one or both kidneys. Luck was on my side (luck and some great recommendations). Social networking is the employment matchmaking of the internet, but I refuse to call my former boss Yenta.