Daniel Seddiqui couldn't find a job after graduating from the University of Southern California, so he created his own job.
As a press agent.
For himself.
The 26-year-old Seddiqui, a former USC track star, has embarked on a journey to land 50 jobs in 50 states. Las Vegas is number 13.
It's a new town every week. And at every town comes another interview. And in case you don't think he's got a strategy, one of his last jobs will be the one he lined up in New Jersey with a book publishing company.
He was a hydrologist in Colorado, and NBC in Denver interviewed him.
In South Dakota, he was a rodeo announcer. TV was there, too.
In North Dakota, he worked as a cartographer. Just ask the ABC affiliate there.
In Minnesota, he worked at a machine shop and that's when he hit the big time, with a piece on CNN.
Last week he spent Thanksgiving at home in Los Altos, Calif. CNN had him on again - live, this time.
This week he's a wedding planner at a downtown wedding chapel, Vegas Weddings. And you can see he landed another interview.
He loves the attention. He says he's always been the class clown, addicted to any attention he can get. In high school, he'd get kicked out of volleyball games because he cheered too much, made too much of a scene.
In college - at the University of Oregon for three years and then at USC - he got attention for being one of the 20 best steeplechase runners in country. Attention, at least, among the students who follow steeplechase.
"Then, I guess the attention stopped," he says. "Now the attention is back. More than ever."
Seddiqui says he was paid for nine of the 13 jobs. In Las Vegas he's making $10 an hour plus a room at the Orleans and the $400 will get him through the next two weeks - he isn't getting paid at his next stop.
Admittedly, some of the jobs were more realistic than others. He's actually helping to coordinate weddings this week and was arranging bouquets Thursday.
Seddiqui, who earned a bachelor's degree in economics, admits he doesn't know much about marine biology or making maps.
What he does have is the tenacity to talk his way into a job - especially when the employer sees he might get some publicity out of it. But it wasn't easy. He figures he got nearly 2,000 rejections in landing the 50 jobs.
On the road, he lives cheaply, needing to make only the nut on a $70 monthly credit card bill. Hotels, until here, were never an option. He's mostly stayed with co-workers or families he meets along the way and used more than his fair share of free Internet access to update his blog at livingthemap.com.
Among his proudest accomplishments: finally landing in the pages of the Daily Trojan, the USC student newspaper. He never got any ink during his track days. But now that he's a drifter, he's on the front page, he says with a wide smile.
Among his clips from small-town newspapers: working on a corn farm in Nebraska and in a general store in Montana. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer blogged about his days as a marine biologist in Washington.
He even went international when an Australian television station covered his week as a logger in Oregon.
On the way back to work Thursday, he got a text message from a producer with the television show "Inside Edition," letting him know its story on him was being held a day.
No biggie. On Thursday morning, he was on Fox News. Producers even let him read the weather report in preparation for a job as a weatherman he has set up for February in Ohio.
On Saturday, Seddiqui will jump into his 1997 white Jeep and head to Arizona where he will be working as a Border Patrol agent. Well, almost. He's allowed to shadow them for the week.
And someone will write about it.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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