Untethered: A Story of Unemployment & Anxiety

Unemployment as Freedom…?

You know the saying, when one door closes another opens. This is assuming that you have some savings or a partner who can support you and the household while you job hunt, of course. It may sound like a good idea to take some time to seek out a job that you’ll truly love. And, if I’m honest, while we are under stay at home orders and kids are e-learning, not having a job feels like one less distraction to being a good parent.

I knew two months before my last day that I would be leaving my job. I had my review with my very supportive boss. I read the constructive criticism from my editors and just started laughing. My exact response was, “You are all way too nice.” My supervisors are supportive, strong women trying to help me see where I was succeeding and where I needed to work harder, without judgment or personal attack. Thanks so much, ladies! I really appreciate the effort, but I knew that I was not a good fit for the position. It was demoralizing and frustrating to try repeatedly to smash my square self into that round hole. Nonetheless, for a year I did my best to learn the laws and lingo of employment law. While I learned quite a lot, it always felt like I was adrift in a vast sea of legal jargon with only a lifeboat and no solid land in sight. (Thanks for the various floatation devices, Betsy and Tessa!)

After leaving Littler, my plan was to find freelance work, or a copy writing contract, to earn some income while I worked on my middle grade novel. I hatched this plan in February… before the pandemic started shutting down the country. Then my kids’ began distance learning in March and I wrapped up my last month of work while trying to do three jobs–parenting, teaching assorted 3rd and 6th grade lessons, and summarizing pandemic stay-at-home orders. Those weeks were a blur of shock, sadness, frustration, and more than a touch of anger. My kids are good kids and good students, but every parent reading this knows how difficult it is to suddenly try to tackle two or three full-time jobs at once. It is soul-sucking.

Articles for us working parents trying to DO ALL THE THINGS

• I am feeling this headline from Time.com: All Parents Are Having a Tough Time Right Now. But Parents of Middle Schoolers Have It Especially Bad
• The WHO: #Healthy at Home, Healthy Parenting
• And from the CDC: Talking With Children About Coronavirus Disease 2019
• A Working Parent’s Guide To Paid Family Leave In The Families First Coronavirus Response Act–Kelly Anne Smith, Forbes.com
• And for you ‘rents of littles, bless you! Maybe NPR and Sesame Street can help a bit: When Will This Be Over? Sesame Workshop’s Tips For Parenting During A Pandemic

Privilege & Priorities in a Pandemic

I must acknowledge my privilege that I have the ability to take time to seek fulfilling work. I know–I’m very lucky on this front. But I did work pretty hard to complete my law degree and practice my analytical, writing, and marketing skills over the last 20 years. That said, let’s discuss the floating.

While my day-to-day gig as a Legal Writer created a fleeting feeling of purpose, it came along with a lingering feeling of failure. Wah wah. I know, I tried something new and difficult and it didn’t work well. But for any of the writers among us, you know that vulnerability of putting yourself out there and being shot down is visceral. When the process repeats weekly for a year, the sense of growth and reaching and learning can be overshadowed by self-doubt. I had to prioritize my sense of self-worth and choose my happiness over my paycheck in order to pull myself out of the mental health rut I had been digging. And then came the ‘rona.

The combination of 1) not having a job or daily schedule and 2) the pandemic which upended all routine left me feeling lost. Like many, the pervasive sense of uncertainty around the COVID-19 pandemic casts a long shadow over the future. Would we ever feel safe again going to a concert? Would flying on airplanes feel less fraught someday? When can we go back to hugging hello when reunited with far-flung family and friends? Our entire society experiencing these fears and doubts simultaneously only magnifies the feeling of helplessness and loss.

On top of this greater unease, my resume does not obviously back up my writerly ambitions. I am about 25% through the novel I am working on with my daughter, and we have an agent who is interested, but that project is a LONG way from bringing in any publishing credits, and *fingers crossed* money. So, here I am tapping away on a blog to increase my “portfolio” on the off chance it will help me create a platform.

I’ve included a few helpful links below in case any of you out there are in a similar boat as a burgeoning writer. I haven’t had luck yet, but I’ll keep visiting and following the sites listed below for helpful suggestions and encouragement.

Prioritize Wellness

To wrap up, with no job and no plans, my days run together. My primary goal now is to keep my family running, comfort the kiddos when they feel the world coming down around them, and support my husband while he keeps us going financially. It feels really odd to have no daily schedule as someone who has worked or been in school full-time since I was 13 years old. I had summer jobs all through middle and high school and college, and summer and part time jobs through most of law school. Since taking the bar exam, I’ve been unemployed for about 6 months total. I have always thought that work equals value and a paycheck proved a worthy person.

Make no mistake, I have tailored my professional career toward work/life balance as much as possible. I didn’t practice law. I sought “alternative careers” related to law, and looked for work from home jobs with flexible schedules. I wrote some about this in my first post. But this time is different. There is no email to check, no conference calls to remember, no meetings to prepare for. I’m a full-time mom now and it feels strange. Early on with the stay safe at home orders, I made a home schedule thinking it would keep us organized. The state of that schedule now is an excellent physical representation of how well the idea has taken hold.

I share this post not to request sympathy but more to empathize with everyone’s struggles right now. We are all juggling multiple responsibilities in a time when we probably feel more like binge-watching Netflix with some junk food and adult beverages. Some of us are parenting and losing our minds and worrying about paying the bills. Some are working and parenting and feel like a failure at both. Some are alone and bored and just craving the noise and comfort of human contact. This is what I remind myself of when I am feeling helpless or unmoored. We are all in this together, even if we are in our homes and feel alone. We must prioritize taking care of ourselves and our loved ones the best that we can.

Hang in there, friends! Hopefully we can come out of this challenging time with more caring for ourselves and each other.

–MaranthaB