Well, I've applied to more than 1 job each day last week--I averaged 2 applications each day and there's no sign of slowing down!
While I am glad I am starting now, before the pressure is (really) on, now I see I could have started sooner. Having reviewed hundreds of job postings, I have begun to notice common skills and qualifications that I have not got and that would serve me well as I look for stable employment and financial solvency. For example, it would help a great deal if I could demonstrate real proficiency in Excel and PowerPoint. What does it take to be "proficient" or "expert"? This is going on the list of Questions to Ask and of Training to Pursue. Other jobs want a portfolio of writing samples, and it seems that chapters of my dissertation will not serve. What to do? Do I start (yet) another blog, a professional one in which I write little articles twice per week in order to make a (barely) plausible case for myself as a "content-writer"? For other jobs, demonstrated abilities in budgeting are required. I imagine sending in my own monthly and yearly personal budgets and savings goals might be a bit naive. How does one demonstrate these things? What is it, specifically, they are looking for? Is there a workshop or continuing ed class I can take that will help me out here?
Being able to create such lists will give me something to talk about so that when people start asking "So, what are you going to do?" I will have some things to say. I think that might be one of the most isolating aspects of late-stage dissertating and early-stage job-hunting: one is too close to the project to say anything about it in the first case and one is too new to the process in the second case to say anything about it, either. One is left with no real response than pasting on a too-bright smile and reciting, again, "Oh, well, I'll figure something out!" Lists and questions, at least, can become conversational material.
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