The Decade that Was

Things that happened this decade:

Moved to a new city, left a job for another; laid of from job, found a job laid of from job (the previous three all in one week); found a job, left job for a better one, whole lotta people died, went to Europe 6 times, left job for a better one, moved to a new city, finished my degree, laid off from job, discovered Whatever column, moved to a new city, still looking for job.

In between I fell in love, fell out of love, met amazing people, saw amazing things, read some pretty good books, read some okay books, stopped reading two awful books. Learned about wine, spent time with good friends, had some fun, some heartache, some heart-stopping moments, had some heart-wrenching moments. A lot of lessons learned, and a lot of experience gained.

Came out of the other side alive. All in all I can't complain.

What We Look Like to Other People

An old high school acquaintance contacted me tonight, somewhat out of the blue. She was probably my closest friend at that time; we were two parts of a triumvirate of girls, kind of geeky, kind of outsiders and yet proud of that status. I went off to university, she got married, the third faded from view as well. In any case we were doing the thing that you do when you reconnect with someone from your past - trade histories, trade current events, basically catch each other up. And as I read my note to her, a response to the very innocent question "what are you up to?" I wondered what she would think as she read it.

Because in my view, I sounded either like the devil-may-care, leaf in the wind, adventurer; or else like a total loser mooching off friends and relatives. I imagine that the reality is that I will come off somewhere in the middle of that. At the same time, I am sure she is wondering what it is I make of her and her choices in life. They are, I imagine, good choices for her. She sounds happy and proud of her family, which is no mean feat.

But I wonder how much we try to sugar coat it for others. No really, I'm fine, no worries, not a care in the world, couldn't be happier, said in much less bald terms. Because we fear that we don't measure up - as is evidenced by my immediate assessment that I either sound really happy or like I am one step away from pushing a shopping cart filled with all my worldly belongings.

It brought me to mind of another such encounter, oddly enough this old and dear friend was there too, now that I think of it. It was at my ten year reunion, surrounded by people who were finishing doctoral programs, or whose professional careers were really taking off, I was asked what I had been up to. I listed the string of things I had been doing, made some off the cuff remark about how I seemed to change not just jobs but entire careers every two months, and felt like an idiot among all these people. But then a woman whose life I very much envied (she was finishing her doctorate at Stanford!) sighed and said, "wow, what an interesting life you are having. I feel so boring, all I've done since graduation is go to school."

These always seem to come as timely reminders for me. A reminder that the mirror I hold up to look at myself is often much harsher than what others see when they look at me; it is a softer light and one that I think I need to see myself in more often.

What is the Self Worth?

As days drag into weeks and weeks drag into months of this period of unemployment, I begin to question why so much of our self worth is tied up in what we do. It came to me this evening when I had yet another of those lovely emails that start out "thank you for your interest in..." and end with "decided to pursue other candidates." Yes, at least the company is taking the time to let me know and I appreciate it. But when the application was made late on a Saturday and the response comes early on a Sunday, you just know that no human has looked at your resume. It makes me angry. And hurt. And frustrated. Once again I am being rejected out of hand. Because...wait for it... I am apparently rejectable, apparently worthless, apparently useless. Because I am unemployed and that makes me a loser.

Whoa - wait! How did I get from one computer spitting out my resume to being worthless? Seriously - how does anyone make that kind of leap of reasoning, wholly without net or safety harness? I think we all do. For various reasons. We don't have the title, or the success or the position we envisioned - or worse yet - that we think we are supposed to want. But then throw in a lay off, the rigors of that weekly unemployment filing with the endless questions, the log of jobs applied for and the feeling of suspicion that surround it and suddenly it can be very hard to haul yourself out of bed in the morning.

I am unemployed, laid off from a company that was seriously foundering. I wasn't fired due to some heinous mistake, or due to an overwhelming series of small but consistent goofs. It just happened. To me and a large number of my fellow citizens. But what I am not is a loser, a slacker, a dolist, or even that currently trendy term - a victim of the current economic crisis. So I choose to not believe that I am somehow worthless because I didn't happen to hit enough of the key words in my resume to make a computer happy.

I expected that there would be a certain level of rejection. I never expected that I would get the first job I applied for. So now I fight the cumulative effect of it all. I am so much more than what is scribbled onto two sheets of paper. All that was passed over was a list of my previous jobs, a sampling of some of my work accomplishments, and some nice formatting. It wasn't an indictment of who I am.

The View from the Other Side

Last week was a bit emotional for me. A lot of changes, some expected, some out of the blue. I packed up my life - again (amazing how much stuff I can live without!) and drove south to the Bay Area. My day to day life has a surreal quality about it now, packing up my stuff, driving two days through mountains, snow and olive trees - just another day. It is easy to fall into that routine of no routine and begin to believe that this here, this is normality.

As I settled into yet another spare room, battling with a cold (sniffling and sneezing and gasping for air are hardly the foundations for insight and inspiration), I began to question if anything was ever going to be even a pale imitation of what my life has been for the last decade. Not in a 'woe is me' kind of way, but more in a 'hey I wonder if that shirt comes in any color other than mustard' sort of way. Philosophical, detached, neither sad nor despairing, but not motivating and uplifting either.

Then it happened, a friend dropped a line - she had just been laid off. This is a lovely woman who has done her level best to keep in touch since my 'separation' from the company. One of the only ones to have done so. I was floored. She is a fixture, or was fixture. And now she too is on the bread lines, as it were. What was interesting to me was my reaction. I felt happy for her. Happy? Really? She just lost her job.

Yes. Happy. Because she was good and truly stuck there. A smart, savvy woman capable of so much but allowed only to function in a very narrow window. The curse of being an admin. But now she is free. Free to find someplace that values her for her myriad of skills, a place that will be thrilled to have such a person and will do their damnedest to keep her. But wait - that applies to me as well. I was set free, too. Free to do all those things.

This morning I find that I have a renewed energy to look at those job openings. I find that I am more willing to be assertive in my cover letters. Looking at her layoff from this end of the spectrum has been enlightening indeed. Invigorating, even. Maybe we all need to be on the other side of the mirror every now and again, to get that view of ourselves.