The Big and the Small of It

My mom has suggested that I turn my recent economic experiences into some type of writing project. I’m not exactly sure I agree with her, but at least I owe her the attempt to put my thoughts down.
So as I thought about this, I came up with the idea of a universal portion to this predicament and a personal one. Universal means what it says; a quality to my situation that is, unfortunately shared by a great many people. On a personal note, my situation probably is shared by quite a few people as well.
Universally, a lot of people have lost their jobs. If the graph I saw the other day is correct, in the span of less than a year and a half we have nearly double the unemployment rate. If we hit 10% for the country by the end of the year – and by all accounts, we probably will – then more people will be out of work than have been for decades.
Think about that – decades.
This is an idea I want to impress upon anyone that has advice about how to look for a job. Things are different now. This is a phrase we’ve used in the past, but like most overused platitudes (It’s not that bad. It will grow back in.) it has lost its power to describe what is really going on.
Put it a different way, with another overused platitude: the rules have changed. It doesn’t matter how much experience you have, or certifications or whatever else you can name that used to help you in a job search. Now, employers are guided by one rule, and one rule only: who they can get that will cost them the least.
That, in a nutshell, is how an employer has always looked at you. But now it is especially true. I worked for law firms and there were, depending who you talked to, different kinds of people. (Alert: Gross generalization to follow! If you are easily offended, sorry.) If you talked to the lawyers, there were two kinds of people: lawyers, and everyone else. If you talked to the paralegals, there were three: lawyers, paralegals and everyone else. If you talked to the secretaries, there were four: lawyers, paralegals, secretaries and everyone else. I was always in the “everyone else” category. Compounding that is the idea that, in a fiscal sense, there are two halves to the business of law firms: the lawyers, who make the money for the firm; and everyone else, easily defined as an expense.
On the very day I was laid off, the Denver Post ran a story about how large firms were weathering the times. The firms’ solution: cut staff. Translation: cut expenses.
On the micro part of the situation, I run the risk of creating the “Awww…” moment, but so be it.
Ultimately, I will be going through this alone. I have many friends that have given me advice and support, as well as family that check in periodically to see how I’m doing, but the fact that I am facing this crisis alone really hasn’t changed. The older I get the more I understand why people get married and, more importantly, why they stay married. Especially if they don’t seem very happy together.
It is for times like these. At best, a marriage is a partnership between two friends. At worst, well, we’ve all seen or heard of the worst a marriage can be. But in times like these a marriage is that stretched out blanket the firemen are holding down on the street as you plummet downward. In times like these, a marriage is, “At least I have this.”
I’m really not looking for sympathy (okay, well, maybe a little); I’m just trying to explain my mindset. It’s not like I’ve not had my chances. I’ve known some extraordinary women in my life. Women that, knowing what I know now, I would walk through fire for. But alas, I had my chances and I blew it. Several times.
And it’s not the big moments I miss; it’s the quiet ones. The Sunday mornings; the ride home from work, knowing I’ll see her; the momentary hesitation before I flush the toilet with a smile and mess with the shower; than undeniable knowledge of another presence in your home; that unmistakable feeling that someone else is there.
So to bring this back to the original subject: does the loss of my job make me unique? Hardly. Is it that I can’t seem to hoodwink another female into relationship that makes me unique? Hardly. But perhaps it is the combination of the two that I can spin into a story people may be interested in.
Or maybe I’m just coming across as a whiney little putz that needs to dig in and weather this like a big boy.

The Waiting

I liken this feeling to one of a medicinal bent. Imagine you were told by your doctor that something had “come up,” something “strange” was in a scan, or an x-ray, or some test of fluid they took from you previously. Imagine that icy stab of fear – that falling feeling of the unknown – and you begin to understand where I and 9.5 million of us are at. Jobless.
I admit, I didn’t think I would ever be in this position. I didn’t think I would ever lose my job to the economy. I found it much more likely I was going to lose my job because I got sloppy, or bored, or…worse. Before I felt I understood how the world worked and before I rediscovered writing as my escape – my tool to beat back the mediocrity of American existence – I struggled with what I subconsciously understood as the “quiet desperation” of life. I was both impressed and repulsed by the idea someone could go to a job day in, day out, for twenty, thirty, even forty years and consider it normal. Indeed, the obverse – not having a job or having a succession of jobs – was, and for the most part, is considered abnormal.
There had not been anything in my life as I thought about this I had ever done for a decade or more; now, of course, in my 40’s I’ve lived for many decades and it has been decades since I graduated high school and college (the biggest events of my life so far). To consider that people could work at the same job for as long as I had been alive or been out of school was nearly inconceivable.
To be fair, it is remarkable and enviable that someone can achieve such a milestone. For whatever reason they managed to get to such an objective, whatever gave them the ability to do so, it is laudable they were able to do so.
What I didn’t know then was that, more than likely, everything else the person did made it bearable to do the same job day after day. The car, the homes, the hobbies, the spouse, the kids, the pets, the family, the vacations – all of it was fodder for the mind. Or grist to chew the cud of everyday life. Every day life – those eight hours of work plus the time it took to get there.
But back to my original idea. I received such a pronouncement – notice that something was going to change. I thought I was untouchable. So when I was laid off, when I was let go purely in a move to save money for a corporation I had been with for such a short time, I had to shift how I was going to live for the next few weeks or months.
Well, it turned out to be months and I still do not have a new job. And it is likely I won’t get one anytime soon. Each time I look at my home page I see some expert saying that things are going to get worse before they get better.
Things can’t get much worse for me. Well, they could, I have to admit. I could get a non-metaphorical diagnosis of impeding medical doom. I could have an accident and lose my car. I could lose my house. I could lose my books. (Those of you who know me know that last one is one of my worst nightmares.)
So where in the process am I now? I decided on a course of treatment; and we’ve adopted a wait and see attitude. I have been given a good prognosis – as long as everything proceeds according to plan – and I’ll emerge, if not better, at least on a more level playing field than before. (Remember folks, this is just an extended metaphor!)
But the waiting…well, it’s just…damned…annoying.