Surviving Unemployment

My season of unemployment will soon be coming to an end. On Tuesday, I was offered a part time position at a company which is known for their job security and internal advancement opportunities. I am not going to share where it is until I know what their policies are, but I am very excited. I am just waiting for them to send me a contract and I should start on July 15^th.

This has definitely been an interesting experience, and if I am being completely honest, I do have mixed feelings about it ending. After all, there are some perks to being unemployed. Namely, the sleeping in, plus the time you have to spend with all those hobbies, interests, people and pets that tend to be at least slightly neglected when you get sucked into the daily grind. On the other hand, being stuck in the house every day, and turning in application after application without seeing any results can get a person down after a while. I am definitely ready to get out in public again and am looking forward to meeting new people and learning new skills.

I know there are many people out there still struggling through unemployment, so I thought I would share some of the things that I learned during my experience.

•   Be prepared, filing for unemployment is a pain in the ass. Everyone told me that it would be easy; I was that one lucky person to have issues with both the phone number and the website. It took me a week to apply. Try to stay calm, don’t freak out and throw your phone against a wall. You may regret it.

• When sending in resumes, take the time to write individual cover letters for each job even if you are not asked for one. Use the items listed in the qualifications section of the job posting to create the body of the letter. This will take a lot more time (which you have plenty of now), but it will increase your chances of getting an interview sooner.

• Even on the rainiest, most depressing day of your experience, get up and get dressed. Getting ready for the day, even if you are not going anywhere, really helps you get motivated to do something; whether it’s searching for a job, doing the laundry or walking the dog. Staying in your jammies encourages you to lounge and nap all day, which can lead to feeling more depressed and hopeless.

• Find a project. Something to keep you busy that isn’t related to trying to finding a job. This will also help you stay motivated and busy during your time off. It is also a fun outlet for when you get job search burnout. You will get job search burnout.

•  Open yourself up to new experiences. Apply for jobs you would love to have, not just the ones you know you can do. Yes, you do need some experience, but in an interview an excited candidate will get more points than the one that is just there because they need the job. Everyone needs a job, get a new shtick.

So that’s my advice for surviving unemployment. I had some big plans when I first started this adventure, not one of them has been seen through to the end. What I have learned most from my experience though, is that you cannot let your job get in the way of your other goals or ambitions. I am determined to keep making headway on all those wonderful plans I had in April.

Unemployment: Making it Work

Unemployment is a weird little monster. Some days are good, you apply for jobs, you clean the house, and you work on projects. Other days are not so good; those are the days when you feel useless. When you don’t want to do anything but sleep and you are sure that you are never going to work again. For me the bad days are even harder. For me, on the bad days, it is not just the stress of the bills that still need to be paid, or the loneliness of the days spent by myself. For me, each day that I am unemployed it feels like a threat to my Independence, a threat to everything I have worked so hard to overcome.

Independence is a capital letter word in my vocabulary; growing up it was the most important thing, and to some degree still is. It was the reason for everything; for the hours of physical and occupational therapy, for the almost countless surgeries, for the IEP’s and the other three letter acronyms in my life (MRS, AFO, SSI, CIL). Independence meant that I had made it, that I had shrugged off every doubt, every low expectation and I had made it. I had survived, I had overcome, and I had beaten my disability.

Now on the bad days, I feel like that independence is slipping away. I know it has only been a month, but I am starting to worry about what I will do if I don’t find another job; if my unemployment runs out and I find myself depending on Tom for everything.  I depend on Tom for a lot already, he is my main source of transportation, but I have always had my own money. I have always paid my own bills and been able to buy the things I needed or wanted without having to ask someone else for it. 

I am also starting to feel trapped. I cannot drive, I live too far to access public transportation and my interaction with others is now limited to the ladies in my weekly quilting class, Taden, the cats and my husband who has been working as much overtime as possible to make up for my lack of income. On the bad days, I feel lonely, friendless and pathetic.

In order to keep the bad days at bay, I am trying to stay busy. I drag myself out of bed even if sleeping all day seems much more appealing. I have my coffee. (I am quickly becoming an addict, something I never managed to do while I was working in the traditional sense.) I spend the morning writing and looking for jobs. I am currently working on a Children’s book as well as a narcissistic, non-fiction novel based on this blog, both of which I intend to e-publish. In the afternoons I focus on my other creative endeavors. I have set up a website where I can sell my photography, and I am working on new quilts along with setting up an etsy site to (hopefully) sell them.

Of course there is still that little voice in my head telling me no one will buy any of my work and that all this time will have been wasted; but I took a crutch to her teeth last week, that voice is mostly garbled now.

I have no idea if any of this will amount to something, but it keeps me in control of my situation, it keeps the fear and isolation at bay. Plus, if this does work out, what better way for me to define Independence than by making a living on my own terms, my own talents?

If you are interested in checking out my photography please click here. If you can’t buy, leave a comment. I would love to hear your feedback.