Yesterday was my one month anniversary of being unemployed. Contrary to my expectations, the time is going by very fast. That's due mainly to a busy schedule I'm trying to keep. I've established a regular morning routine of spending a few hours checking the online job sites ( mainly TheLadders.com and LinkedIn.com), and applying for anything that seems promising. I've also started doing some volunteer work. That may help me make some contacts and open doors that I never even new existed in some different fields. And if not, at least I'm spending some of my time doing something useful in the community.
There was a recent interview on NPR with a women who was a vice-president at a bank when she was laid off. Her to-do list for the day of the interview had 26 items on it, all related to job hunting. Looking for a new job had become a full time job in itself. She expects that it will take her at least 6 months to find one. Persistence and patience is the name of the game now for job hunters.
Unfortunately, for young couples with no real savings or severance pay, time is not something they can comfortably spend. At least those who can get unemployment compensation have something coming in for a while to help. But even that eventually runs out. Our district has a special election this coming Tuesday to fill a vacant seat in Congress. It's not surprising that the economic issues have dominated the debate, as they should.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
How Should I Have Spent My Time?
I've established a good habit of getting up early each day before 6am to check the online job listings. I've also looked into getting a "project management" certification in order to make myself more useful to prospective employers. In the mean time, I've done some volunteer work, and talked to people about doing more volunteer work in the near future. I figure it's a way to make more connections and possibly open some doors that I don't even know exist yet.
That's a satisfying set of respectable and socially useful activities. I'm not writing this to blow my own horn though, but to contrast this to an alternative activity I could have spent my time on.
I'm not a stock market expert, but I did suspect that Citigroup and AIG stock, which both dipped below $1 on fears of going bankrupt, were undervalued because the government would not let them go bankrupt. If I studied this a little more and convinced myself that it was worth the risk of investing my severance pay on these stocks, I could have made over $100,000 in the last two weeks as these stocks shot up. I didn't make that investment out of fear that I could have lost a good portion of my severance pay if I was wrong, and my family needed that money to survive on until I find my next job.
Does this seem wrong to anyone else? An economic system that rewards stock speculation so much more than socially useful efforts seems broken. Maybe we accepted this in the past, but perhaps now the problems this leads to have become all too painfully apparent. Perhaps the economy won't fully recover until this situation fundamentally changes. As long as the most economically profitable thing to do involves financial speculation, we can't consider ourselves to be on the road to creating a reasonable and sustainable economy for the 21st century. Just some speculation, and I don't know if it's more wishful thinking than reality yet.
That's a satisfying set of respectable and socially useful activities. I'm not writing this to blow my own horn though, but to contrast this to an alternative activity I could have spent my time on.
I'm not a stock market expert, but I did suspect that Citigroup and AIG stock, which both dipped below $1 on fears of going bankrupt, were undervalued because the government would not let them go bankrupt. If I studied this a little more and convinced myself that it was worth the risk of investing my severance pay on these stocks, I could have made over $100,000 in the last two weeks as these stocks shot up. I didn't make that investment out of fear that I could have lost a good portion of my severance pay if I was wrong, and my family needed that money to survive on until I find my next job.
Does this seem wrong to anyone else? An economic system that rewards stock speculation so much more than socially useful efforts seems broken. Maybe we accepted this in the past, but perhaps now the problems this leads to have become all too painfully apparent. Perhaps the economy won't fully recover until this situation fundamentally changes. As long as the most economically profitable thing to do involves financial speculation, we can't consider ourselves to be on the road to creating a reasonable and sustainable economy for the 21st century. Just some speculation, and I don't know if it's more wishful thinking than reality yet.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Making comparisons about how bad off we are
We've grown accustom to a lifestyle and a set of expectations that the planet and the economy cannot support. When something is unsustainable, by definition it cannot continue on forever. In some sense that is the story of our current economic crisis. One of the aspects of it that makes it painful though is that the adjustments are currently taking place in a very uneven fashion across society – many good people are finding themselves completely unemployed, while others continue to earn a substantial income. The difference between the two can often be the result of almost random circumstances.
While I don't mean to diminish the mental anguish of those suffering hard economic times right now, (having experienced a good bit of that anguish myself when I lost my job after 26 years), it is also worth noting that even people in difficult economic circumstances in this country are quite well off compared to large segments of the population in poorer sections of the world. And we are better off than the people who experienced economic hardships during the great depression. While the economic safety net here may not be as good as it is in western Europe, people still do have access to food through government programs and private charities, and emergency medical care is available to all. There is still fee public education for children. And though we tend to take this for granted, a very major benefit is that we still have a stable society with a relatively low crime rate.
The emotional tole from the insecurity is very taxing, and it is compounded by a feeling of personal failure in the back of your mind when you see other people who appear to have secure jobs. However, there should be some small comfort from the fact that our emotions tend to exaggerate how bad our circumstances are by comparing them to other people or other times. Such comparisons, when done realistically, can instead lead one to count one's blessings.
While I don't mean to diminish the mental anguish of those suffering hard economic times right now, (having experienced a good bit of that anguish myself when I lost my job after 26 years), it is also worth noting that even people in difficult economic circumstances in this country are quite well off compared to large segments of the population in poorer sections of the world. And we are better off than the people who experienced economic hardships during the great depression. While the economic safety net here may not be as good as it is in western Europe, people still do have access to food through government programs and private charities, and emergency medical care is available to all. There is still fee public education for children. And though we tend to take this for granted, a very major benefit is that we still have a stable society with a relatively low crime rate.
The emotional tole from the insecurity is very taxing, and it is compounded by a feeling of personal failure in the back of your mind when you see other people who appear to have secure jobs. However, there should be some small comfort from the fact that our emotions tend to exaggerate how bad our circumstances are by comparing them to other people or other times. Such comparisons, when done realistically, can instead lead one to count one's blessings.
Monday, March 9, 2009
The Next Stage of Life?
Back in December when I was contemplating ways to make significant transformations in my life, I posted the following note on my office wall:
I struggled with this idea for a while, looking for something perhaps only symbolic, or perhaps more substantive, that I could put behind me to signify moving forward into a new stage of life. Mozart changed his middle name when he got married, which may have been his way of signifying a rebirth or new phase of his life. What change should I consider making?
Ironically, that note on my office wall foreshadowed the involuntary event of being laid off 2 months later. I guess I finally have my answer. For me, this may well become a new distinct “4th stage” of my life. The first stage was my childhood in my parents home. The second stage was my life in college. The third stage was raising a family and a 26 year career at IBM. Now I may well be entering a fourth stage with a new career and focus. As a friend recently told me, consider this opportunity to be a great gift to be exploited in the fullest.
With that in mind, I wanted to share an inspirational quote from Mary Oliver's poem When Death Comes that our minister recently shared with us:
Perhaps making this an end of my "just visiting this world" phases is a good way to look at my new opportunities.
Make some change - get rid of something to signify putting things behind you and moving forward.
I struggled with this idea for a while, looking for something perhaps only symbolic, or perhaps more substantive, that I could put behind me to signify moving forward into a new stage of life. Mozart changed his middle name when he got married, which may have been his way of signifying a rebirth or new phase of his life. What change should I consider making?
Ironically, that note on my office wall foreshadowed the involuntary event of being laid off 2 months later. I guess I finally have my answer. For me, this may well become a new distinct “4th stage” of my life. The first stage was my childhood in my parents home. The second stage was my life in college. The third stage was raising a family and a 26 year career at IBM. Now I may well be entering a fourth stage with a new career and focus. As a friend recently told me, consider this opportunity to be a great gift to be exploited in the fullest.
With that in mind, I wanted to share an inspirational quote from Mary Oliver's poem When Death Comes that our minister recently shared with us:
When it's over, I don't want to
wonder if I have made of my life
something particular,
and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing
and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply
having visited this world.
Perhaps making this an end of my "just visiting this world" phases is a good way to look at my new opportunities.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Empathy and Economic Hardship
I commented below about how having your life upended for a while can dramatically reduce your interest in social causes that your were previously passionate about, such as environmental responsibility. By contrast, I found a surprisingly strong empathy quickly developed in myself with other people going through financial distress. In reality my financial situation is relatively good in terms of short term funds and overall job prospects. However, there were some rather dark periods where I wasn't sure that this was the case. Now I feel a type of personal bond with those people for whom the outlook is much more bleak.
Andrew Sullivan does a great job in his blog of posting occasional personal stories of people dealing with economic hardships. Consider the story of a young couple who married in 2007 and bought a house at the height of the housing bubble. They're working very hard struggling to pay off a huge mortgage on a house that is now probably worth $150,000 less than they owe on that mortgage. If either of them looses their job, which is very possible, they loose everything. By conventional standards, they are a hard working couple that did nothing wrong.
I recently heard about a local case in my community of a woman who showed up at a food pantry for the first time. She described her husband as a very hard working man who always did a good job of providing for her and their three children. He's a construction worker though, and hasn't had work in months. Their savings are gone, they have nothing left, and they're about to loose their house. Unlike me, they did not get a big severance package complete with health care benefits when his work ended, they have no pension to look forward too, and as a young couple I doubt they have much if any 401K funds that they can tap into.
There are so many good people in terrible distress right now, generally through no real fault of their own. Those of us who are relatively secure have a hard time imagining what this actually feels like. My heart goes out to them in a way it never used to. Whenever anyone asks me a survey question about national priorities, job creation now jumps to the top of my list closely followed by making health care available to everyone.
Andrew Sullivan does a great job in his blog of posting occasional personal stories of people dealing with economic hardships. Consider the story of a young couple who married in 2007 and bought a house at the height of the housing bubble. They're working very hard struggling to pay off a huge mortgage on a house that is now probably worth $150,000 less than they owe on that mortgage. If either of them looses their job, which is very possible, they loose everything. By conventional standards, they are a hard working couple that did nothing wrong.
I recently heard about a local case in my community of a woman who showed up at a food pantry for the first time. She described her husband as a very hard working man who always did a good job of providing for her and their three children. He's a construction worker though, and hasn't had work in months. Their savings are gone, they have nothing left, and they're about to loose their house. Unlike me, they did not get a big severance package complete with health care benefits when his work ended, they have no pension to look forward too, and as a young couple I doubt they have much if any 401K funds that they can tap into.
There are so many good people in terrible distress right now, generally through no real fault of their own. Those of us who are relatively secure have a hard time imagining what this actually feels like. My heart goes out to them in a way it never used to. Whenever anyone asks me a survey question about national priorities, job creation now jumps to the top of my list closely followed by making health care available to everyone.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Personal Uncertainty and Environmental Concern
I have always had a passionate interest in environmental issues and in climate change in particular. I personally arranged for the showing of Al Gore's “An Inconvenient Truth” to more than a dozen local educational and civic organizations over the years. It always bothered me a little to see the lack of interest in these issues among the lower income and minority segments of our community. The standard explanation was that when you have other pressing issues on your mind, long range environmental concerns get pushed aside. I've always wondered how accurate that explanation really was though.
Well I can now tell you from first hand experience that there is a lot of truth to it. During the one month period between learning that my job was in jeopardy and finally being laid off, my interest in environmental issues essentially completely disappeared. Listening to my old friends in the environmental movement continue to discuss climate change issues began to seem as relevant as listening to a group of people discussing the status of public education in central Africa. Intellectually I new that it was an important topic, but emotionally it seemed like an increasingly esoteric subject of little relevance to my immediate and pressing problems.
It was very interesting to observe such an extreme swing in my attitudes when I stepped back at looked at it as a detached observer. To tell the truth, I felt a little embarrassed about it too. I let short term personal concerns override what I knew were long term vital public issues. The important observation seems to be that it's difficult for people to show an emotional concern for our long term public security and well being when they're facing a great deal of uncertainty in their own personal lives. Keeping a focus on our longer term interests will be both a public and a private challenge as we live through this period of economic uncertainty.
Well I can now tell you from first hand experience that there is a lot of truth to it. During the one month period between learning that my job was in jeopardy and finally being laid off, my interest in environmental issues essentially completely disappeared. Listening to my old friends in the environmental movement continue to discuss climate change issues began to seem as relevant as listening to a group of people discussing the status of public education in central Africa. Intellectually I new that it was an important topic, but emotionally it seemed like an increasingly esoteric subject of little relevance to my immediate and pressing problems.
It was very interesting to observe such an extreme swing in my attitudes when I stepped back at looked at it as a detached observer. To tell the truth, I felt a little embarrassed about it too. I let short term personal concerns override what I knew were long term vital public issues. The important observation seems to be that it's difficult for people to show an emotional concern for our long term public security and well being when they're facing a great deal of uncertainty in their own personal lives. Keeping a focus on our longer term interests will be both a public and a private challenge as we live through this period of economic uncertainty.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Doonsbury Covers my Story - Sort of
I've been following the Doonsbury comic strip since my early collage days in the 1970's. It's paralleled my life at many times in amazing ways, and it continues to do so now. One of the main characters, Rick Redfern, a reporter at the Washington Post for many years, just got laid off in the comic strip last week. His situation has many similarities to mine, and it will be interesting to see where this story line goes. My compliments to the author Gary Tredeau for tacking on this increasingly common social trend.
The relevant sequence of events starts with this strip.
The relevant sequence of events starts with this strip.
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