Miracle

As the posts below indicate, I have been unemployed. Since last December, I have written and rewritten my resume; called recruiters; visited on-line job boards and networked. I have been frustrated, angry, sad and sometimes depressed.

Recently, I accepted that I would have to move to another state to get a job. I was a prime candidate for positions in Rochester, New York; Jacksonville, Florida; Madison, Wisconsin and Nashville, Tennessee. In fact, I was supposed to fly to Nashville for an interview today.

Then, Tuesday, something happened. At 10:00 a.m., I got a call from a recruiter from the Detroit branch of the company working with me on the Rochester job. She needed to fill a local position quickly. I arrived at her office at noon and interviewed with three people from the team I would be working with. At 2:30 p.m., she called me and offered me the job. I accepted. I start next Monday. It is a close commute, pays well and uses great technology.

I felt thrilled, giddy and strange for the whole day. I called many people. They were as shocked as I was at the amazing speed with which I learned of and obtained this job. My wife was overjoyed. I would be working again; we would not have a commuter marriage or have to sell the house and she would not lose her job, friends and family. The whole thing is still a little unbelievable.

Throughout my unemployment, I've gotten great support from family and friends. Many people have prayed for me. I am not religious (agnostic, not atheist). My recent experience, though, has made me question that stance. I have felt taken care of during the last several months. My sudden employment feels like a miracle. It makes me want to explore prayer and faith and focus less on living the good life and more on being good in life.

I plan to write more posts about my unemployment experience. For now, though, I'm just happy and ready to join the working world again.

Coming to a Town Near You

Last night, I played in the pit orchestra for some very good show choirs from a local high school. It was their final concert of the school year and the last concert for their seniors. There was a mixture of smiles and tears as each senior said a few words. Then, over the strains of “"Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye," the choir choreographer announced where each senior planned to go to college.

I, too, will soon make a transition. I have decided to leave Michigan to find work. I have applied to several companies out of state over the past few weeks. Now, a few of them (in New York, Ohio, Wisconsin and Florida) are considering hiring me. I hope to start working for one of them in the next month.

This was not an easy choice. Aside from occasional weekends, I will be away from my wife, father and friends (Mrs. CA could join me in a year or so). However, my wife and I agree that it’s necessary. There are no jobs for me here. Each passing month that I don’t work makes my experience less relevant to employers. I will not lose my best opportunity to earn a good living waiting for a state economic comeback that may be years ahead.

As I watched the seniors look forward with enthusiasm, I looked forward full of questions. Will being a split family work? Will my wife and I be happy in the new place? Will she be able to find a job? What about my musical career? These questions cause me some apprehension but not enough to keep me from finding the answers.

Whether it’s work, school or a relationship, I have always had a hard time leaving. I feel more secure in the familiar and comfortable. It is difficult to leave the only place I’ve ever called home. Nevertheless, it feels like the right thing to do.

So, I may be coming to a town near you. I’ll keep you posted as details develop.

Losing It

When I was 38 years old, I belonged to a large Unitarian church on the west side of town. One of the parishioners, an older woman acquaintance, was a palm reader. She offered to read my palm quickly and I agreed. “You will soon meet a woman who will change your life, a ‘bolt of lightning,’” she said. “In your late forties, you will begin a very difficult time. Many things will go badly. Eventually, though, you’ll get through them.”

These may sound like easy predictions to you but they were uncannily accurate. A month later, I met Mrs. CA, indeed a bolt of lightning, whom I married shortly thereafter. When I was 48, the bad stuff started to happen. I joined a very stressful, undermanned project that drove me crazy for most of the next three years. My mother died. My father went blind, came to live with us and suffered prostate and skin cancer. Finally, late last year, I had to accept a “special early retirement” (the “get out or else” plan) from my job because of the bad economy.

The hits have kept on coming. Our tax bill ended up higher than expected because I lost my job (it’s complicated). I haven’t found a new job after over four months of looking. I have worried about paying the bills. I have often felt useless.

Some people whom I tell about my unemployment act as if I have a disease. This offended me at first but makes sense the more I think about it. Unemployment and the setbacks that preceded it are all losses. This explains why I am going through the five stages of grief from the Elisabeth Kubler-Ross book, On Death and Dying.

It started with Denial. I was sure that I’d get a job within a month or two. After all, I had good technical skills and years of experience. Then, I felt Anger. I couldn’t understand why employers wouldn’t even interview me for positions I was four times qualified for. After a while, I was Bargaining. I’d take any IT position, even if it didn’t help my career and didn’t pay enough. Finally, Depression set in. I became convinced that I’d never get a job that would pay even half of what I made before or let me use my intelligence and training. Here I’d come, Wal-Mart and McDonald’s – with all the other white-collar workers – if you’d take me.

That’s where I’ve been until today, when Acceptance arrived. Today, for the first time in a while, I see my situation clearly. It is what it is. I have no control over the economy, my lack of mobility or employers’ willingness to pick my resume from the pile of 200. I can’t know if and when my situation will get better. However, I can control my reactions. I can feel the pain without letting it disable me. I can be resolute without forgetting to have fun. My future may not be the one I always imagined for myself but that doesn’t mean that I have no future.

For the first time in a couple of months, I feel some peace and satisfaction. The irony is that I coped with my losses by losing some more: the idea that I’m responsible for and in control of my status; unreasonable pessimism or optimism; a sense of entitlement; and a feeling that I’m nobody if I don’t have a well-paying, intellectually-challenging job. I’m sure that it will be difficult to maintain this posture but I’m going to try because I feel reborn. Or, given the day, should I say resurrected?

Hitting the Concrete, Invisible

I have been a software developer for over 22 years. If I’ve learned anything in that time, it helps to be comfortable with abstraction. Abstraction is the expression of an idea a level or more removed from a concrete implementation. Much of software development consists of understanding abstract ideas and making them real.

Unemployment used to be an abstract idea to me. I heard the stories of layoffs and people losing their homes on the news. I felt sympathy. However, I never knew the real feelings and experience of someone out of a job.

Now that I have been out of work for almost three months, unemployment is concrete. It feels like crap. I sometimes feel as though I am not pulling my weight, a drag on society. I worry a lot. I don’t sleep well. I watch every dollar. When I hear people coolly giving advice to the unemployed (go back to school, move to another state, etc.), I think, “Wait until it happens to you.”

In addition to being jobless, I am also invisible. I accepted a “special early retirement” package (i.e. take this or we’ll lay you off). It amounts to very little, what I would get on unemployment. As a condition of the package, though, I cannot file for unemployment benefits. Since I don’t file, the government doesn’t count me in the unemployment percentage rate that you hear in the media.

I’m a lot luckier than many. My wife works (bless you, dear). So far, we are making it, albeit by dipping into emergency savings. However, hitting the concrete, invisible not only hurts but gives me a voice that no one can hear.

Welcome to the Hood, Carrie

Careful readers of the blog (both of you) will notice a slight layout change. The sidebar of favorite blogs ("Good Stuff") is now a Blogger list. I have also added a new site to the list: Carrie Fisher.

Carrie started her blog last month. As most of you know, she is an actor, a writer and the daughter of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher. She has lived through drug addiction and bipolar disorder. She has also had to deal with growing up in the nexus of entertainment and sudden fame.

Carrie's blog posts tell stories of her family, her friends and herself in crackling prose. She gives those of us on the outside a view into a seemingly familiar but foreign world. Her writing is honest, straightforward and personal, well suited to the blog format. I urge you to check her out.

A Breath of Spring

Here in Michigan, we have been in a deep freeze for a long time. We have had a one-state recession since 2001. Recently, our 8-year-old slump welcomed a baby brother, a global economic infant terrible. This has led to an unemployment rate over 10%, the specter of auto company failure, record foreclosures and many people moving away. Finally, this winter has been one of the coldest and snowiest on record.

This beat down has left those of us who can’t leave depressed and fearful. We think that the financial glory days are gone, never to return. We know that the half-life of a regional economic implosion would be too long for us. We have resigned ourselves to a life of fewer good things. Even so, we wonder whether we have set our diminished expectations too high.

In this context, yesterday was a wonderful surprise. The temperature reached 60 degrees, nothing to write home about in California but sensational here in February. People wore lighter jackets or none at all. Mrs. CA and I walked the dogs without slogging through snow or tripping on ice. Green grass began to appear. Cars and kids splashed through the puddles.

In my job search, too, I got good news. One of my contracting companies called about an opening at a non-automotive company. Not only am I well qualified for it but also the hiring manager is someone I worked with at my previous job.

I don’t pretend that this signals a turning point. The literal and metaphorical cold will return for a while. In its midst, however, an occasional breath of spring may remind us that the hope for better days is not in vain.

Question Time

Last weekend, I went to my internet Scrabble site to play some games after a hard snow shoveling session outside. I usually do pretty well at Scrabble. This day, however, I lost game after game. As I watched my rating plummet, I posed a question to one of the site moderators. “Where is the bottom?”

This and other questions have been on my mind lately. I have been unemployed for almost two and a half months now. Every week, I search the internet job sites; apply for any jobs that look promising; read technical books; practice my software skills; and check in with the contracting companies looking for positions for me. This has yielded two interviews (one good, another with an absolute jerk) and a couple of follow-up inquiries. However, it has not given me confidence that I will have a job anytime soon.

Why? Jobs are scarcer in Michigan than other parts of the country. The contracting company reps tell me that they’ve never seen a time like this. Clients are so afraid of the potential domino effect of one or more auto company collapses that they’re freezing all but essential hiring.

Because jobs are scarce, employers can be very picky. I’ve seen jobs advertised with requirements so specific that they never could have yielded an adequate pool of respondents in the past. Now, though, the company will probably find 10 people who fit the bill precisely.

That leaves me in a strange place. I have experience with a variety of different technologies and roles (developer, analyst, leader, manager). I have done them all well (often simultaneously). I used to consider this an asset. However, it scares away companies who want specialists. Companies who want managers think that I’m too technical. Those who want technicians think that I’ll be happy only as a manager. Some people even tell me that that my 22 years of experience in some technologies puts me at a disadvantage for positions requiring only 5 years experience. As George Fields (Sydney Pollack), the agent, told Michael Dorsey (Dustin Hoffman), his actor client, in the movie Tootsie, “no one will hire you.”

So, I wonder where the bottom is and other things. How long will it take to get a job? If I do get a job, will it be doing something likely to keep me employed or make me an easy target for the next layoff? What’s the least amount of money I can afford to take?
If I don’t get a job, how long can we make it? How long do I wait before I retrain for something completely different? Will we ultimately have to file for bankruptcy, walk away from home and family and go somewhere else?

The worry associated with these questions is probably responsible for my increase in vivid, scary dreams. I hope to have the answers soon. Unlike Michael Dorsey, though, I think that dressing as a woman is out – for now.