Hello friends!
Last week was…I don’t even know. Where does the time go? This weekend it’s backwards, apparently. I can’t believe we’re staring another daylight savings hellscape this weekend. Anyway, I’m shooting for weekly newsletters, but I don’t have great aim.
This week I’m thinking about…
how I am feeling like I did in 2009 all over again
And also for paid subscribers…
a frustrating midterm grade (that I tried to dispute and failed)
feeling embarassed about my kid’s behavior
Recession Redux 🔁
I was surprised, but not shocked when I lost my job at The Zoi Greek Directory (the sillest name for a company ever). I had been miserable for months, aimlessly sitting in an entry-level digital marketing position with minimal management, and it was painfully obvious. I spent unproductive hours in an office I had no business occupying, watching bad TV shows on a new website called “Hulu,” while I furiously applied for jobs on Craigslist.
Once released from my very confusing responsibilities, I figured it was only a matter of time before I snagged a new job. and was even excited about the prospect of “funemployment.”
The only problem was that there was nothing fun about being unemployed in January of 2009. There weren’t going to be any jobs for anyone, let alone a recent college graduate with two difficult-to-explain internet writing jobs under her belt.
From garage sales to lemonade stands, and even selling Beanie Babies on nascent internet forums, I was born with an uncontrollable urge to hustle. I love to work so much that it’s become a central character in the story of my life. From slinging Chinese food to writing campaign copy for 20th Century Fox, and even co-writing a book for Harper Collins, I’m never doing just one thing. Looking back, it’s no surprise that my lifelong passion for work would eventually lead me to pursue studying its practice.
Work had always been so easy for me until it wasn’t. Though I somehow still managed to achieve the self-awarded milestone of having held “30 Jobs Under 30,” the recession stopped me in my professional tracks before I’d barely set foot on a path.
I spent the next two years wandering an economic desert, from LA to Denver, and back to LA, bopping around as a restaurant server, unpaid intern, executive assistant, and even the assistant manager of a hot dog stand called Steve’s Snappin’ Dogs, where I earned an annual salary of $24,000. Though I was grateful to have any income at all, I couldn’t help but feel like a failure, my self-esteem dropping with every passing month, and my career continued to stall.
My particularly difficult time was in part because for whatever reason, in my circle of friends, I seemed to be the only one who had fallen into the economic abyss. I waffled between breezy acceptance of my fluid state of exploration and utter despair. I intellectually understood a global crisis was affecting millions of others but, in my immediate world, I felt alone. That’s when I started blogging (LOL).
I’ve been thinking about this existential crisis from my young adulthood a lot lately. Recently, there have been plenty of deja vu moments and emotions that have brought me back to that time. Even though I’m not working at a hot dog stand scrubbing the fryers, I’m flailing at finding work, and losing ounces of self-confidence with every day that goes by and my work situation remains the same.
Why is everyone hanging out (at work) without me? And why do I keep ending up here?
Just like in 2009, I know that so many other people are in the same boat as me. My LinkedIn feed is flooded with little “open to work” profile picture frames, and desperate pleas into the abyss for work from highly skilled and talented individuals. But, I don’t know those people. They’re in my online orbit, but not in my physical life. The ones I know have freaking jobs! Adult careers!
Did I used to be one of those people or was I just masquerading as someone with their shit together? It’s hard to tell from my vantage point, holding a chaotically full resume and a charming cover letter no one ever reads. Compared to so many of my peers, my professional path has been not linear. It’s difficult not to succumb to comparisons and doubts over whether I took the (or several) wrong turn at some point.
Sometimes these feelings remind me of my undergrad graduation. I barely knew anyone in my departmental degree ceremony. All of my friends were in communications and business, not liberal arts. Who were all these people sitting with me?? I felt a little isolated then, and I feel it now. Standing here out on an island I have to wonder, did I make the right call?
Even if I did wander down some weird shortcuts and sketchy back alleys, it’s sort of too late to turn back now. It’s probably best to embrace it and lean into my new, slow-going eventual pivot. As much as I’d like to see this new career path as a clean slate where I can spin a tidy new narrative for myself, I know I’m only fooling myself. Though I dream of being on the straight and narrow, at almost 40 years old, it’s probably safe to say I don’t do well on paths.
Ultimately, I usually only find success while wandering, which is something I need to remind myself. Because lately, I feel so lost even though I’ve never had a clearer direction. But, let’s not confuse direction with a destination. While I know where I’m headed, I don’t really where I’m going––just yet anyway. It’s all a bit confusing, but according to my track record, the only way out is through.
In the meantime––in the here and now––applying for jobs feels pointless, which is nothing new. It has for years. Even while I was freelancing for years, I never stopped regularly applying for full time work. Now, I can’t even get a phone call with a personal employee recommendation or original writing sample (Nope, I never heard from that company from last newsletter.) But, I’m mostly grumpy that I gave up three years of momentum as a freelancer for one year of full-time work, only to be left with having to rebuild all over again. I’m stressed about money. I’m tired of chasing potential clients. Mostly, I’m just sick of doubting my abilities and not feeling confident about my windy, pit-stop-filled resume.
But at the very least––and I am so serious about this––I am not working somewhere called The Zoi Greek Directory. That was bad.
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