Christmas Day. It's a quiet day, a lazy day. The one day of the year where there's no agenda and one can just be, surrounded by family, food, hot cocoa, scattered and shredded gift wrapping paper and opened boxes. It's a day when it's futile to worry about the silent phone. No prospective employer would call on this day, so the phone can be comfortably silent; not feeling my eyes boring into its plastic shell, willing it to ring. Tomorrow is Sunday, another day to just be.
If things hadn't changed I would have been worrying about the snow we're supposed to get tomorrow and on Monday. I would have worried about my commute. I would have worried about how I would look to my bosses if I told them I'm scared of getting out on the road when it snows and that I'd like to work from home. Things like that used to gnaw at my insides. So I am thankful. Snowy days and Mondays won't have the power to get me down for awhile. I might even get to build a snowman with my daughter.
I need to work on my resume...
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Day 3
It's Christmas Eve and I do feel the love. I am surrounded by well-wishers. Some say I shouldn't be sad, some tell me to think of this as a much needed break that should be spent resting, relaxing and hugging my child. It's all good advice. I need to hear what they are saying to me. I am listening, absorbing and also waiting for the words that no one has uttered yet. No one has told me not to worry, at least not with confidence. The way I tell my daughter that a shot is nothing to worry about, that it will be no more than a pinprick and that's it. There's no one around to tell me that.
I've taken a good look at how I feel about all this and I know I am not sad. The misery is over, the misery of feeling like nothing but an expensive piece of furniture at work. I haven't felt more invisible anywhere than I did at this place. I was quiet about my work, I knew no one except my next door neighbor. I was able to amaze and amuse a few people with my caustic turn of phrase sometimes but otherwise I was suffocating in a pervasive state if invisibility. I was spending four hours commuting each day just to go to a place so lacking in warmth, intelligence, a sense of community, goals, long term vision, effective leaders. So sadness isn't something I feel. I had considered quitting and walking out like some others had before me; one had gone off on a "walkabout", another had simply walked out one day, never to return. I guess I play safe.
So no, I am far from sad but there's a worm within and it's eating at me from the inside. There's nothing I can do about it. People can console you through your sadness and there are so many things in the world to be sad about, job loss isn't one of them. But what to do about worries? How does one chase them away?
Perhaps it has something to do with age. When I left home and traveled 10,000 miles to start a new life for myself as a stranger in a strange land I don't remember being worried. I had faith in myself, my self-confidence might even have been enviable to others. It seems to have vanished now. I don't know if I can pull it off again.
I've taken a good look at how I feel about all this and I know I am not sad. The misery is over, the misery of feeling like nothing but an expensive piece of furniture at work. I haven't felt more invisible anywhere than I did at this place. I was quiet about my work, I knew no one except my next door neighbor. I was able to amaze and amuse a few people with my caustic turn of phrase sometimes but otherwise I was suffocating in a pervasive state if invisibility. I was spending four hours commuting each day just to go to a place so lacking in warmth, intelligence, a sense of community, goals, long term vision, effective leaders. So sadness isn't something I feel. I had considered quitting and walking out like some others had before me; one had gone off on a "walkabout", another had simply walked out one day, never to return. I guess I play safe.
So no, I am far from sad but there's a worm within and it's eating at me from the inside. There's nothing I can do about it. People can console you through your sadness and there are so many things in the world to be sad about, job loss isn't one of them. But what to do about worries? How does one chase them away?
Perhaps it has something to do with age. When I left home and traveled 10,000 miles to start a new life for myself as a stranger in a strange land I don't remember being worried. I had faith in myself, my self-confidence might even have been enviable to others. It seems to have vanished now. I don't know if I can pull it off again.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Day 2
It didn't matter that the Jimi Hendrix song released on May 12, 1967 was about an entirely different sort of experience. It was an anthem of a generation that wasn't preoccupied, not then, with the mundane realities of bosses, jobs, promotions and this very establishment concept of 'experience'. It still kept popping up in my aural and visual fields when I first got serious about a post-MBA corporate career in the year 1998. As though hearing the song everywhere wasn't enough William Sutcliffe even wrote a book called "Are You Experienced?" in 1998. I started seeing subway and bus faces hidden behind the covers of this book.
I imagined baby-boomer bosses and hiring managers, now all grown up, sitting in plush chairs behind large desks and asking me in that classic Hendrix way, "Are you experienced?"
My resume could fit on one page in 1998 and because I wasn't experienced enough the experts suggested I display my MBA education at the very top. All I heard back then was "experience, experience, you need experience, you don't have enough experience." When I discussed the futility of a day's efforts with loved ones I used to complain about the dilemma of finding a way to get experienced without being experienced in the first place.
Like all desperate phases that phase passed and I was able to jump from one experience to the next over the next 12 years. The resume went from a page to three pages, each experience leading to a job that was similar to the one where the previous experience was earned.
I am older, wiser and more experienced now. They can't deny I am experienced. Except as I stand here, one step poised at the threshold of a very crowded job marketplace, I am learning that "experience" is a perishable commodity with a set shelf life. By the time you earn enough experience it's already too late.
Almost like bananas. You buy them at the supermarket when they still look green. You leave them in your fruit bowl and watch them as they turn a lighter shade of green and a little yellow the next day and then you better eat them right away if you have an aversion to the overripe, very yellow and soft-on-the-inside kind, the kind that's only good enough to be mashed up for banana bread. Yes indeed, an experienced person is exactly like an overripe banana that no one wants...unless they love banana bread.
My friends in the recruitment industry are telling me that I am too old to sell myself based on education alone and selling myself on 22 years of steadily growing experience ages me and makes me look too old and too overqualified. I am now asked to make some changes to the resume where I look as though I only have a few strong years of relevant experience.
Well, no problem. I'll get working on that right away. I am still too young to become banana bread. As I start trimming, restructuring, finding a young and smart looking font and selecting powerful keywords, keeping in mind that the keyword emphasis has shifted from action verbs to hard-hitting nouns during my years of gainful employment, I can't help but wonder about the absurdity of it all.
There was an article in The New York Times today about a town in Alabama where true to financial predictions the pension fund for town employees ran dry by 2009. Retirees here stopped getting pension checks. Some went back to work in their late sixties and others became dependent on the charity of others. They ran a race all their lives only to hit a dead end, a concrete wall at the end of their race with absolutely no way out.
This is life in all its absurd glory and I am willing to embrace it with all the joie de vivre I possess at this moment.
Day 2 brought this realization home. The draft of the new resume is open in another window on this computer. That window is minimized for the moment, the task is a dreary one and there are too many distractions at home. I might have to go to the sunny periodicals room of MOPL again to get this done.
I imagined baby-boomer bosses and hiring managers, now all grown up, sitting in plush chairs behind large desks and asking me in that classic Hendrix way, "Are you experienced?"
My resume could fit on one page in 1998 and because I wasn't experienced enough the experts suggested I display my MBA education at the very top. All I heard back then was "experience, experience, you need experience, you don't have enough experience." When I discussed the futility of a day's efforts with loved ones I used to complain about the dilemma of finding a way to get experienced without being experienced in the first place.
Like all desperate phases that phase passed and I was able to jump from one experience to the next over the next 12 years. The resume went from a page to three pages, each experience leading to a job that was similar to the one where the previous experience was earned.
I am older, wiser and more experienced now. They can't deny I am experienced. Except as I stand here, one step poised at the threshold of a very crowded job marketplace, I am learning that "experience" is a perishable commodity with a set shelf life. By the time you earn enough experience it's already too late.
Almost like bananas. You buy them at the supermarket when they still look green. You leave them in your fruit bowl and watch them as they turn a lighter shade of green and a little yellow the next day and then you better eat them right away if you have an aversion to the overripe, very yellow and soft-on-the-inside kind, the kind that's only good enough to be mashed up for banana bread. Yes indeed, an experienced person is exactly like an overripe banana that no one wants...unless they love banana bread.
My friends in the recruitment industry are telling me that I am too old to sell myself based on education alone and selling myself on 22 years of steadily growing experience ages me and makes me look too old and too overqualified. I am now asked to make some changes to the resume where I look as though I only have a few strong years of relevant experience.
Well, no problem. I'll get working on that right away. I am still too young to become banana bread. As I start trimming, restructuring, finding a young and smart looking font and selecting powerful keywords, keeping in mind that the keyword emphasis has shifted from action verbs to hard-hitting nouns during my years of gainful employment, I can't help but wonder about the absurdity of it all.
There was an article in The New York Times today about a town in Alabama where true to financial predictions the pension fund for town employees ran dry by 2009. Retirees here stopped getting pension checks. Some went back to work in their late sixties and others became dependent on the charity of others. They ran a race all their lives only to hit a dead end, a concrete wall at the end of their race with absolutely no way out.
This is life in all its absurd glory and I am willing to embrace it with all the joie de vivre I possess at this moment.
Day 2 brought this realization home. The draft of the new resume is open in another window on this computer. That window is minimized for the moment, the task is a dreary one and there are too many distractions at home. I might have to go to the sunny periodicals room of MOPL again to get this done.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Day 1
I dropped Anoushka off at the bus stop and got myself a sausage, egg and cheese biscuit at McDonald's. It was combination #4. Love McD's breakfast menu.
The next stop was Mt Olive Public Library (MOPL) where I knew the coffee was not free but didn't know where I could pay for it. I was embarrassed when the receptionist thought I had asked "if" I had to pay when I had asked "how".
It's a nice, serene place. The periodicals section is awash in sunlight. I had forgotten how quiet a library could be. So much nicer than the cacophony of New York workers at the ex-office whining about their shabby, shoddy treatment at the hands of arrogant Floridans.
At 9 am, library opening hour, there were two of us exhaling frosty, wintry breath as we waited for the doors to open. I greeted him and wondered if perhaps he shared the same circumstance as me. Was he new to this life or is this the only routine he has had for the last several months?
I picked up The Star Ledger. I don't even remember the last time I had glanced at it. I have been reading my papers online now, from a desk bathed in fluorescent light, surrounded by gray cubicle walls.
The last time I got newsprint on my hands, papers still had an extensive classified section for job hunters. I didn't find such a section. Instead I saw several pages of a section called "Legal Advertising". Each ad was the sheriff's office inviting bids starting as low as $400 on various real estate properties. I didn't want to dig deeper in order to get all my facts right because my fear was that these were all a result of foreclosures. That thought is a scary one for an unemployed person responsible for a mortgage in a bankrupt state in a country on the verge of bankruptcy.
The Star Ledger had other news about our governor capping salaries, fighting the federal government about repaying $271 million on a half finished tunnel that will no longer be built and doing nothing about property taxes that don't go away even if you lose your job, like income taxes do. There is probably a frightening connection between these opinions expressed in the editorial section of paper and the aforementioned "Legal Advertising" section. A connection that I am rather unwilling to explore on Day 1 of my state.
The USA Today looked cheerier. It was colorful. The growth rate of US population has slowed down. The 2010 census shows that we are now a nation of 308 million people, a 9.7% growth rate, the slowest since The Great Depression. Probably not a bad thing, all said and done, although it is sad to note that the population of Michigan actually declined; no jobs, no prospects in the glorious erstwhile automobile state.
The other story on the second page of the USA Today was of a hardworking couple who had lost their home where they spent many Christmases and were now living in a garage like space of their parents' home. This year their kids' gifts were donations from charitable organizations. They were happy, they had faith that this wouldn't go on much longer. They were good Christians and God wouldn't let them down.
They have their faith, I have the words of my daughter that echo in my ears day and night, "These things don't happen to us." She has grown up seeing that such things don't happen to us. We have navigated her life so far in a way that she didn't sense any choppy waters. I must preserve her innocence somehow, preserve the belief that these things don't happen to us. She is too young for the lesson that anything could happen to anyone, anytime and that the pillars she leans against can crumble too. All lessons should arrive in due course, not prematurely. For now, our magnetic north pole is more or less aligned with our geographical north pole and there can be no cataclysmic shifts. Not for her, not now.
A phone call interrupts this reverie. It's the hubby asking where I am. When I tell him I am at the MOPL he says, "Oh no! You are one of those people now!"
I answer, "Yes indeed, I am...and loving every moment of it!"
I look around me now, the retirees are trickling in. I wonder if I am in one of their special MOPL, sun-kissed spot. I should probably head on out, go home, clean the closet, organize the kitchen, the books, de-clutter, settle down with some dreamy creamy hot chocolate and find a beautiful "Jobs R Us" site to explore...especially since the man sitting next to me has just started talking to himself. I should grant him his privacy.
The next stop was Mt Olive Public Library (MOPL) where I knew the coffee was not free but didn't know where I could pay for it. I was embarrassed when the receptionist thought I had asked "if" I had to pay when I had asked "how".
It's a nice, serene place. The periodicals section is awash in sunlight. I had forgotten how quiet a library could be. So much nicer than the cacophony of New York workers at the ex-office whining about their shabby, shoddy treatment at the hands of arrogant Floridans.
At 9 am, library opening hour, there were two of us exhaling frosty, wintry breath as we waited for the doors to open. I greeted him and wondered if perhaps he shared the same circumstance as me. Was he new to this life or is this the only routine he has had for the last several months?
I picked up The Star Ledger. I don't even remember the last time I had glanced at it. I have been reading my papers online now, from a desk bathed in fluorescent light, surrounded by gray cubicle walls.
The last time I got newsprint on my hands, papers still had an extensive classified section for job hunters. I didn't find such a section. Instead I saw several pages of a section called "Legal Advertising". Each ad was the sheriff's office inviting bids starting as low as $400 on various real estate properties. I didn't want to dig deeper in order to get all my facts right because my fear was that these were all a result of foreclosures. That thought is a scary one for an unemployed person responsible for a mortgage in a bankrupt state in a country on the verge of bankruptcy.
The Star Ledger had other news about our governor capping salaries, fighting the federal government about repaying $271 million on a half finished tunnel that will no longer be built and doing nothing about property taxes that don't go away even if you lose your job, like income taxes do. There is probably a frightening connection between these opinions expressed in the editorial section of paper and the aforementioned "Legal Advertising" section. A connection that I am rather unwilling to explore on Day 1 of my state.
The USA Today looked cheerier. It was colorful. The growth rate of US population has slowed down. The 2010 census shows that we are now a nation of 308 million people, a 9.7% growth rate, the slowest since The Great Depression. Probably not a bad thing, all said and done, although it is sad to note that the population of Michigan actually declined; no jobs, no prospects in the glorious erstwhile automobile state.
The other story on the second page of the USA Today was of a hardworking couple who had lost their home where they spent many Christmases and were now living in a garage like space of their parents' home. This year their kids' gifts were donations from charitable organizations. They were happy, they had faith that this wouldn't go on much longer. They were good Christians and God wouldn't let them down.
They have their faith, I have the words of my daughter that echo in my ears day and night, "These things don't happen to us." She has grown up seeing that such things don't happen to us. We have navigated her life so far in a way that she didn't sense any choppy waters. I must preserve her innocence somehow, preserve the belief that these things don't happen to us. She is too young for the lesson that anything could happen to anyone, anytime and that the pillars she leans against can crumble too. All lessons should arrive in due course, not prematurely. For now, our magnetic north pole is more or less aligned with our geographical north pole and there can be no cataclysmic shifts. Not for her, not now.
A phone call interrupts this reverie. It's the hubby asking where I am. When I tell him I am at the MOPL he says, "Oh no! You are one of those people now!"
I answer, "Yes indeed, I am...and loving every moment of it!"
I look around me now, the retirees are trickling in. I wonder if I am in one of their special MOPL, sun-kissed spot. I should probably head on out, go home, clean the closet, organize the kitchen, the books, de-clutter, settle down with some dreamy creamy hot chocolate and find a beautiful "Jobs R Us" site to explore...especially since the man sitting next to me has just started talking to himself. I should grant him his privacy.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Signed the papers
I signed the papers
I said I had no questions
When they wanted a reaction
Perhaps a reaction
Is more of a band-aid
for them, even if it comes
gift-wrapped as a kind and gentle
opportunity for me to let loose.
But no, I am not Florence
and I offer no comforts.
Something animates my steps
these days. I stand tall.
I am starched stiff.
I am a body in motion
Yet to register
the external force.
So I walk tall
Not meeting an averted gaze
and claiming with pride
the space that's already
sterile.
I said I had no questions
When they wanted a reaction
Perhaps a reaction
Is more of a band-aid
for them, even if it comes
gift-wrapped as a kind and gentle
opportunity for me to let loose.
But no, I am not Florence
and I offer no comforts.
Something animates my steps
these days. I stand tall.
I am starched stiff.
I am a body in motion
Yet to register
the external force.
So I walk tall
Not meeting an averted gaze
and claiming with pride
the space that's already
sterile.
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