How did I get here?
15 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
in career, economy, job search, Uncategorized, unemployment Tags: career, career path, career transition, job satisfaction, job search, underemployed, unemployed
The biggest worry the unemployed have is “when will this end?” You search and you agonize and you pray to find a job. You finally get one and the relief sets in. But no one talks about how you feel 9 months or so down the road. In polling my friends who were recently unemployed and now have been in a new job, many are wondering, “How did I get here?”
After all the work of searching for a job (and it is WORK!), many take a job and realize that it isn’t what they want to be doing. We are a country of “under-employed” and of highly qualified workers who can’t find a job in their field…so they settle. They take consulting work, part-time work, or a full-time job at a substantial pay cut to just be working again.
The reality is this. After a year or two of not having a job, the hope is gone and the money is running out. You got through weeks and months of no interviews, no responses and no hope. Then you get an offer of an interview. You go in. You are just so happy that someone has finally recognized that you have talent and that you want to work. You have something to contribute! The interview process goes on, but maybe this is the only job you have been offered. And you take it, thinking that this is the answer to your prayers. The fear bred in us through the media that “things are NOT getting better” forces our decision-making.
But months later, many workers find themselves dissatisfied. This isn’t what they thought it would be. This is a step back, a pay cut, a moral loss. It’s a paycheck, not a career. I loved my job so much and when I lost it, I was adrift for a while. I was one of the few people who would always say how much I loved my job. And to lose it all, 18 years of hard work in an instant, it leaves you shell-shocked and doubting your value. You didn’t want to change your career, you had to. And some find themselves lost, adrift and floating in a new job that just isn’t the right fit or the thing that gives you a high level of satisfaction any more.
So after the “How did I get here?”, you ask the “Now what?” question. Do you stay in a job and make do? Or do you start the brutal process of job hunting again? What was once a straight career path has now become a windy road of twists and turns. This is the new post-unemployment world.
A celebration of the working dad
19 Jun 2011 Leave a Comment
Cheers to my father. He was a city of Milwaukee police officer for 32 years. He never talked about “job satisfaction” or questioned his calling in life. He did his job. And did it well. He never called in sick and had years of sick time left over when he retired. He wore his uniform with pride and as his daughter, I was always excited to tell people what he did for a living. He wasn’t one of those dads who wore a suit and came home tired from sitting in an office all day. He was a cop! He was out in the world, making it a safer, better place.
My dad was the one who had days off during the week and could come to our field trips as a chaperone and came to our games and activities. My dad was able to give the tour of the police headquarters to my class when I was in sixth grade. He was able to drive me and my brother to school every morning because he worked second shift. He was one of many police officers and fire fighters in our neighborhood. Like all of the rest, they never thought of themselves as heroes or special, even though their jobs were often dangerous. My dad saved someone’s life and he never talked about it, we just hung the photo of him receiving his commendation and basked in the pride of living with someone who would do that. We knew that our dad was going to be at all of our big events and would switch days off if he had to or work overtime to guarantee that.
Ours was a family life where dad was around a lot and there when we needed him. Yes, he might’ve worked some holidays and nights unlike “normal” dads. But we had more of his time and attention because of his schedule and because of who he was. He never talked about how he had to deal with the worst in people, in the worst neighborhoods, for most of his career. He worked hard and we respected him for what he did. He was like a rock star to us, in his dark blue uniform with his shiny badge.
We liked living in the bigger community of public servants, the police and fire fighters, who gave up the 9-5 schedule and the safe life working at a desk to protect and serve the greater good. We always said “I Love You” in our family every day, because of what our dad did for a living. We never took it for granted that he would come home safe. But luckily for us, we were one of those families who didn’t have the tragedy of losing our dad “on the job”. Our dad was just our dad, who happened to have one of the best jobs in the world in our eyes.
Cheers to my father. I know being a police officer was not his first choice of a career. But once he entered the force, he never looked back and he served with pride and dedication. It became who he was and it defined the life of our family. I am so proud to be the daughter of a police officer, always a hero to his family and also to those whose lives he touched through his job.
Happy Father’s Day Dad!
The “Gift” Of Unemployment
07 Jun 2011 4 Comments
in career, economy, job search, unemployment Tags: blessing in disguise, career, career search, employment, gift, inspiration, job hunt, job search, meaning, non-profit, nonprofit, passion, unemployment, volunteering, work life
Losing your job…a gift or a curse? It just might be the gift of inspiration. It is very rare to have some time in your life to figure it all out with a safety net like an unemployment check. I come across so many people who have an illness or have something happen in their lives that brings unexpected sadness. Yet they soldier on, one person I know even saying, “this disease is my blessing in disguise.” I always marveled at that ability to take a bad situation and to turn it for the positive. When you have lost your job and in turn your professional identity, it is hard to positive.
But you begin to realize that in every situation in life, unemployment included, you can become a victim or a survivor. In these hard times of “chronic unemployment” where people are getting discouraged and just dropping out of the job force, it is often a missed opportunity to create your own job or your own path to follow. For a while, I used my talents to create a small part-time business, Nanny On Call. I used my love of children to take the opportunity to help out others who needed the help while giving myself the time to look for a new career opportunity….and to stay fulfilled. I was able to job-hunt and really explore the different things I liked to do while searching for a job that would fit with the things I excel at. I found meaning in being with children and to take a step back and make life simpler and to see it through the wide-eyes of children–no judgement, no assumptions, no baggage.
I also volunteered, because being with people and helping people was something that was important to me, job or no job. More companies really need to take volunteer work into consideration when hiring candidates. The love and passion for a cause where someone does the job “for free” as a volunteer, can really give employers a gauge of the level of commitment a person is willing to invest. I had realized long before I lost my job that I really was enjoying the child care I was doing and the volunteer work much more than my “real job”. The gift of unemployment gave many other gifts—the insight to seek work in a job where I dealt one on one with people each day, the need to make a difference, and the gift of having people care when I showed up to help.
It always sounds corny when people ask, “what is your passion?” But without passion, we tend to lose faith and become the victims and not the survivors. Volunteering helped me survive. I soldiered on and came in with my A-game, my positive attitude and with the need to create meaning even without a paycheck. I treated my volunteer work no differently than I did a paid job–I treated it with respect, I worked hard, and I left at the end of the day knowing that a job well done always has meaning and importance. Today I work at the same nonprofit I volunteered at. The best gift of all.
Who Do I Think I Am?
05 May 2011 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: career, career path, career transition, employment, home life, inbox, job search, job transition, nonprofit, office, unemployment, who do you think you are, work, work life, working, working world, workplace
Lately, I have been fascinated with the show, “Who Do You Think You Are?” on NBC. It traces the ancestry of celebrities. I find their journeys exciting and it spurred me to trace my own family tree on both sides and to see where I came from. When you look back at your family, you realize that people’s occupations and way of life stayed the same for many generations–a farmer passed down the farming tradition, a tradesman, shopkeep or businessman seemed to breed the same. A whole family’s identity was based on what the patriarch of the family did.
We live in a time now where people don’t even keep the same profession in their own lifetime for more than a few years. The question, “Who Do You Think You Are?” gets asked several times over in someone’s career. In my last career, I was a rarity, a “lifer” if you will, staying with the same company for 18 years. When you are forced to leave a job you have had and liked for so long, that scary question comes up, “Who Do You Think You Are….Now That Are Unemployed”. We spend most of our lives putting all of our time and energy into our jobs. We define who we are by what we do for a living. It’s the first question we ask when meeting new people, “What do you do?” which equals “Who are you?” People forgo children and downtime to get ahead in their career. And at the end of your life…what does it all amount to?
I happened to be at a wake last week and I saw the display of photos that gave the visual history of that person’s whole life. What do you see? Parties, birthdays, babies, grandparents, weddings, families. What don’t you see? Photos of the workplace. Photos of your office, your desk, your inbox. We spend a whole lifetime working, striving, sweating to be the best in our professional lives. And when our life is over, that is the thing that matters the least. The people we meet, the lives we touch are what matter. The ins and outs of how productive we were on the job and how many proposals we wrote and how much paperwork we completed are immaterial. Why is the balance so completely off then? Why are 10 and 12 hour work days ok with us? Why are we so afraid to once in a while take a long lunch and meet our spouse for a meal? Or to knock off early to see our kids’ sporting events? Collectively we tend to think of success in terms of paycheck and title and work, not in the payoff that comes from the title of father, mother, husband, friend.
In my own job, being in a nonprofit where great scientific ideas and medical breakthroughs happen, is of course gratifying. But it’s the people whose lives we change, the volunteers we interact with, the patients who tell their stories, those are the parts of the job that stay with me. The very lucky and brilliant people find careers where they make great things happen through discovery, innovation, and changing the world. But they are the rare few. The rest of us plod along day by day and get caught up in the undertow of the workplace wave.
So who do I think I am? I am someone who is defined by the people I meet along the way. At least that’s who I strive to be.
Where was Charlie Sheen when I was unemployed?!?!
06 Mar 2011 Leave a Comment
in unemployment Tags: Charlie Sheen, comedy, crazy, job search, mantra, positive self-talk, self-talk, tiger blood, unemployment, Winning
WINNING!
You know, Charlie Sheen may seem to have lost his mind lately, but quite frankly, I could’ve used his bravado when I was without a job. The thing is, when you have lost the identity of your career, when you have nothing tangible in the business world to define yourself, a mantra helps. WINNING! I am all on board with winning. I think positive self-talk works wonders when you have empty days to fill and a loss of job identity. WINNING! The more I read it and the more I say it, the more I LOVE IT! This guy is unemployed and controlling the media through his own private reality show, CHARLIE TAKES ON EVERYONE! Truth be told, I admire the confidence.
Sometimes it’s the craziest people who give you some inspiration. Here is the world’s top-paid sitcom star, savior of CBS, cash cow to tv commercial sales…and guess what, he’s an ass. But you know what, he is an ass on his own time. Think of all the kooks you’ve worked with, how many people you know who make less money for their company. This guy is a jerk, but a jerk that makes a lot of money for a lot of people. Unlike Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears, as loaded as he was, HE SHOWED UP TO WORK. This guy loves his job, hits his mark, and then blows up in his personal life. I am not saying he is wonderful and should be left alone, but the reason he is being semi-fired is that people who produce the show don’t like him. But isn’t that the premise of his show, that he is a self-involved narcissist that abuses his body with drinking and partying and loose women? And people think it’s funny!
So, I am not saying Charlie Sheen is right or justified or that he should be let off the hook for doing drugs and making bad choices. But at least he has taken on a positive mantra, WINNING! Brilliant, I wish I would’ve thought of it. He is going to end up starting a whole merchandising brand, WINNING! Filled with Tiger Blood and other Charlie-isms. Counting the days until the website pops up where you can buy his t-shirts and hats. There is always brilliance within crazy.
All I know is that I DEFINITELY could’ve used the distraction of humor when I was down in the dumps blue about being unemployed. VIVA Charlie, ride the media tide as long as possible. Somehow I think he will come back with no problem. Hollywood loves a comeback.
In the meantime, I am still wondering if Charlie and Rose end up together….I am betting that CBS brings it back next year and I find out.
2010 in review
03 Jan 2011 Leave a Comment
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Fresher than ever.
Crunchy numbers
A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,600 times in 2010. That’s about 4 full 747s.
In 2010, there were 20 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 16 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 17mb. That’s about a picture per month.
The busiest day of the year was July 1st with 46 views. The most popular post that day was About.
Where did they come from?
The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, linkedin.com, twitter.com, blogs.com, and en.wordpress.com.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for adventures in unemployment, job-pjyhs, “the wittery”, “my unemployment journey”, and what is semi-employed.
Attractions in 2010
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
About December 2009
4 comments
How hard is it? July 2010
1 comment
Up In The Air April 2010
3 comments
The Fear November 2010
Potential July 2010
4 comments
The Unemployment Holiday Blues
23 Dec 2010 Leave a Comment
The holidays bring out the blues in all of us. When you are unemployed, it is especially rough. I was a few days past Black Friday when I entered the unemployment realm last year. I had really enjoyed an amazing Thanksgiving and then was slammed off my feet with the news shortly afterward. The cold dark days and the jolly spirits of everyone else in the world just magnify how bad you really feel. I decided not to sing the Christmas blues, but to take a few days to feel bad and then move into the season with a light heart. This sounds easy but I really had to make a concerted effort to turn my holidays around when I really just felt like laying in bed and feeling sorry for myself.
Most of us tend to use the holidays to focus our unrealistic expectations and then face the let-down when things don’t live up to the hype. After I came out of a few days of moping around, I turned my attention onto this tidbit. The worst had happened, I lost my job and really it was only up from there. I didn’t need to worry about work deadlines and stress, I could focus on really being in the moment. I could take the time to write out some very thoughtful Christmas cards instead of rushing through them. I could troll the malls and enjoy the decorations, music, and smaller crowds while everyone else was at work. I could mindfully wrap presents, ones that I had the time to pick out with care. I could CARE about things, not just rush through them because I was so busy.
If you have lost your job, take the time to enjoy the season and simplify. You don’t need to buy tons of useless gifts, maybe strive for a few meaningful ones and some well-written cards. Focus on tiny moments instead of high expectations. All of this applies even if you have a job. We Americans have this terrible lust for BIGGER, BETTER, MORE, and the LOOK AT ME Syndrome. Instead of trying to attract attention this holiday, give attention. Make heartfelt gestures, say meaningful things. Take the quiet time in your career or in the vacation days you take not to run amok trying to please everyone and make a splash but to be a little zen this year. Try out being humbled by the true spirit of the holidays, the gathering of family and friends and say thanks for the prayers answered.
See the beauty in the basics. Losing your job is not the best present in the world. But maybe if you look at it as a gift, as being presented with more time this holiday season to look around and take stock and reevaluate all the things that are really important…it may be a a whole new way of looking at the holidays. And the blues need not apply for its annual seasonal job with you any longer.
Happy Unemployment Anniversary
07 Dec 2010 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: challenge, fundraising, job hunt, job loss, job search, make a difference, non-profit, success, The Four Agreements, unemployment, unemployment blog, volunteer, volunteering
Well, a year ago I was still coming to terms with the fact that after 18 years, I was let go from my company. I bet everyone is wondering what I have learned in the past year from the whole experience.
The first thing I learned is that sometimes there isn’t a reason for things happening to you that is in your control. Even if I was doing a million different things to promote the security of my job, I was still going to be let go. I cost too much, I was telecommuting, and most of all, loyalty really doesn’t mean anything to a company that isn’t doing well. I worked in the newspaper advertising and editorial business. How many newspapers are being read in print anymore? Fewer and fewer. I realize that I was just going to hang on until they let me go before I found something else. I think most people feel that way. If for you it’s personally not broke, you don’t fix it. So that’s what I did, I enjoyed working from home, being creative and not leaving my comfort zone. Even though I was hardly being challenged professionally, it was ok. So many people are actually MISERABLE at their jobs, that ok was working fine for me.
The second thing I learned is that there is never a good time for bad things to happen. Everyone said to me, “They let you go right before Christmas and while planning a wedding, that’s such a bad time!” Well, I think any time is a bad time to lose your job. But you survive as long as you aren’t living your life beyond your means. I used the unemployment for what it was meant, to get me through until I got another job. I didn’t take advantage of it and I didn’t celebrate it. But I used it as a means to an end. I was unemployed for nine months and I gladly hunted for a job and diligently filled out my unemployment logs. I didn’t act entitled or indignant. Sometimes the success in life just comes from plodding along and making the small every day steps to change your situation. No drama, just life.
The third thing I learned is that it is not personal. If you have read the Four Agreements, you know that “It’s Not Personal” is a big part of learning how to be happy and successful in the world. Losing a job is only personal to the individual losing it. The company doesn’t really care and it doesn’t really benefit you to act like a victim or a martyr. With such a high rate of unemployment, the collective masses wish someone would also take it personally to get unemployment levels down. But really, when you have a job again, you go back to shopping freely at the mall, taking vacations, and getting take-out and not worrying about how the unemployed people are affording these things. It isn’t personal and it isn’t permanent.
The last main thing I learned is that happiness in your job is not really about being comfortable. Now that I am in a totally new career, I realize that I really enjoy and am passionate about what I am doing now. Non-profit is a perfect fit and coordinating fundraising events is a wonderful experience. Am I comfortable? Not really, some days I am learning so much that you can’t be comfortable. But it’s a good feeling to be challenged and nervous, it spurs you on to create great things.
For those who are entering the land of unemployment or still stuck in it, I have this for you. Keep your head held high, be proud of who you are and don’t let a job or not having a job define you. I was able to put a lot of good into the world while I was not working. I wrote this blog to help other people understand and share the experience. I did volunteer work to help others with the free time I was temporarily blessed with. I created a beautiful wedding that was enjoyed by my friends and family. I spent time taking care of children and that experience itself was worth being unemployed to me. Don’t doubt your power to make a difference in the world, you don’t need a job to do that.
The Fear
13 Nov 2010 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: career, cutlure of fear, economy, employment, fear, INdia, job, job loss, laid off, layoff, layoffs, outsourced, outsourcing, unemployment
So last week I was sitting and thinking for just a minute about how happy I was to be at work and how it was almost a year since I was laid off from my job of 18 years. Then came the text from my husband….
“Mass layoffs going on here..50 to be let go.It’s getting ugly.”
My heart dropped into my stomach. I had moved past the fear for a while now. I had a job, had already been there 4 months. I had been so focused on my own job situation, I never really thought about my husband’s. He was a software engineer, he had a skill, something tangible to market himself with. In my head, it never even occurred to me to worry about him. His company laid off people 2 years ago and I was so happy then that he made it through. And he had just made it through again, he was not one of the 50. But the seed was planted…fear.
His company had done what so many seem to be doing now…planting the FEAR and making it run wild in the workplace. The culture of fear, it’s everywhere. Companies will proclaim how it’s their best year ever, how sales are rebounding, their customer base expanding, and then POW. Sorry, we are going to downsize you so we can hire a bunch of people in India for 1/10 of what you make and no benefits. India is the new China. Much hipper socially than China ever was and they will do the job for less money and with no discussion, debate or complaint. They just do the job and ask no questions. Companies still bring workers from India here and sponsor their green card, and bam, The Culture of Fear. The workers say yes to everything A. because it is culturally the way they do things and B. because if they don’t follow along the right way, then the company can just stop sponsoring them and send them back to India. It’s the century’s new slave trade. China and Mexico, oh, they are soooo last news cycle.
When people question how the economy is really not rebounding, I say, well, blame it on the Culture of Fear. In the 50s, children hid under desks waiting for the Russians to bomb us and knock out America. Now it is the workers hiding under their desks, hoping the big bosses don’t drop a bomb on their career.
I know it was bad losing my job but I also know first-hand that it is just as bad to be among the ones left behind. When you lose your job, you mourn, you rage, but eventually move on. The workers who don’t get laid off today now just have to live in limbo, in the Culture of Fear, hoping that next time around won’t come too soon and that if it does, that they don’t get let go.
When does the fear go away? Well, it takes awhile but it subsides. Until the next layoff…
Take Me To The Other Side
12 Oct 2010 2 Comments
in Uncategorized Tags: career, identity, job, job search, recruitment, self discovery, soul-searching, special events, stepmother, unemployed, unemployment, wife, work, writer
It’s always nice to look at a hard situation once you are on the other side. The relief! The stress seems like a memory. We all go through hard things in life, everyone has different situations they have to plow through. Yet somehow we all survive. There are those small moments in life that build. You never think you will get your first kiss, your first job, you’ll never get married, never have a baby, you’ll never survive your kids’ teenage years, you’ll never be able to retire. But we all get there. Admittedly, there is a guilty pleasure in reminiscing the anguish….but only long after the pain is so acute.
My mantra when I was unemployed was “Take me to the other side!” I also sang it aloud Steven Tyler-style just for emphasis. I knew that even though those awful nine months seemed eternal while I was living it, eventually I would be on the other side looking back at it, instead of staring it right in the face. I still have a little fear lurking that sometime in the future the same thing will happen again. Not a crippling fear, but a little cloud that throws a shadow on my sunshine sometimes.
Pushing through to make it inch by inch to the other side, a daunting task. Many things in life are hard, to me being unemployed was so hard because it was a loss of identity. You define who you are by what you do. At the time I lost my job, I wasn’t married and I wasn’t a mother. For women, it’s so easy to have at least those two labels, because as we all know, being a wife and mother IS a job. Because I was engaged and planning a wedding, I think people thought it was FUN and LUCKY for me to be unemployed. I guess those people were the ones who never saw me wandering aimlessly through the local Target store trying to pass the time or slumped at my desk over the computer, silently screaming inside my head.
Your job, for the most part, becomes the central theme to your identity. Who are you without your job? When people ask you to describe someone you know, you will say “oh, he’s a writer” or “she’s an accountant.” It’s usually not a description of your personality that is your first impression, it’s usually that you “are” something that you get paid to do. While I was unemployed, it was a lot of work and soul-searching to figure out who I “was” and who I wanted “to be”. The process of self-discovery is as much work as any job.
So, who “are” you? I like to think that I “am” a special events coordinator, a writer, a renegade, a wife, a stepmother. Mostly though, I “am” happy…with who I “am”! I am Kelly. More adjectives to come….
