That phrase is dreaded and awful. And it’s also the reason I haven’t felt like blogging lately. Well I mean blogging publicly. But back on Dec. 11th, I received notice that my company was eliminating my department. I knew it was coming, I mean I kind of knew it was happening for a good year and a half. But when I heard the words it was a blow to my gut. I’m 30, I’m too young to be having a career crisis, but yet this is exactly what I’m finding myself in. I was lucky, my graduate school internship let into the job I had for 6.5 years. It was my first job.
To be honest, this whole job hunting thing is big and scary. In my life, I’ve always gotten everything I went for and now suddenly I’m not. Also this is the first time since I can remember where I’m not running around doing something. I’ve always had schedule, and now I don’t.
I’m stressed, my sleep schedule is out of whack, and I’m just in a blargh-y emotional mood all the time.
I kind of wish I hadn’t been so naive since let’s say grad school. I wish I would have known how competitive the Instructional Design field is. Now I’m not sure that would have stopped me from going to grad school or anything. But knowing this, I might have tried to do more or something. Now I’m trying to figure out if having one specific skillset for 6.5 years, where I’ve developed really good skills with one type of software I am now lacking in everything else and thus leads to a great disadvantage. Adobe Flash and I don’t get along. I’ll let you in on a little secret, I had to take the class twice in grad school. (Not by my doing because the random teacher guy they had teaching it the first time decided to not give me the 1 point I needed for a regular C and not a C- because I wasn’t creative enough. I’m not bitter about that. Not at all.) And that happened both times I took the class. My brain doesn’t like flash and the layers and the scripting to make things work. I like dumping things into something like Captivate and tweaking with things and changing minor settings and exporting it and it works.
The same with Photoshop. I’m not creative enough to make amazing graphics or anything. I can crop, I can add text, I can do some free transforming, and that’s about it. I don’t even use PS to its full potential.
I guess it’s just frustrating, knowing that everyone is looking for these amazing flash and scripting guru’s and my brain just doesn’t work like that to be one of them. Believe me I’ve tried flash a few times since, and we still don’t get along at all. 
But I mean also look who’s talking the one who has undergraduate degrees in Music and Mass Communications. Guess what, those degrees aren’t going to get me anywhere either. Especially since I really haven’t done anything with them since undergraduate time, and now a days to get any experience in those fields, you’ve got to go to middle of nowhere america and call me selfish, but I’m kind of pretty happy with the general area I’m living in. I don’t want to go to the middle of nowhere to start a new career.
Then there is the whole stigmata of the word unemployment. Guess what? It makes you feel like a big fat loser. I had to unfriend a few people on Facebook because of their derogatory comments towards people on unemployment. Yes, there are people that abuse the system, but there are people like me who didn’t have much of a choice. I mean being lied to by almost everyone in your company when they tell you things are fine and you’ll be doing lots of work. You get pulled into believe this bubble, that the company that bought out your company had the best intentions for you and then things start going down hill, and time and time again you are reassured they are just realigning things and you’ll be good. I’m not good. I was strung along for a year, being stupid and naive thinking it would work out. It never did.
Now I’m sitting spending most of my nights not sleeping because my mind is racing over every what if in the book and then some. Not only that, I then also have to make sure I’m fulfilling every little thing for unemployment like did I go online and file my claim at the right time, did I do the correct amount of job searches, did I apply to the correct amount of jobs for that week and all that stuff. It completely is true that looking for a job becomes a full time job in itself. You screw something up and bam, my money is gone.
Back to that Job searching thing, I’m now getting to the point, where there currently aren’t any more jobs for me to apply to in the Instructional Design field. At least my criteria of being non managerial. I don’t want to be charge of people. I want to do the work. And I’ve got to keep searching, making sure there are jobs to apply to, yet I can’t apply to too many in a week because I need those jobs to be able to apply in the next week and so forth. In a couple weeks I’ll have to be applying to 3 jobs a week. If I’m struggling to come up with 2 jobs a week, I don’t even know what to do for 3 a week. Which I’m pretty sure by then I’ll have to be applying to ask people “Would you like fries with that?” to satisfy the state.
It’s a vicious circle, that you can’t get out of.
I keep thinking of careers I’d be good at, and I come up empty handed. Actually, I keep trying to think of careers that would land me a steady job that I’d be good at, and I come up empty handed. Being good at going to amusement parks, taking pictures (sort of), using social media, reading, and writing aren’t going to land me any job any time soon.
I don’t even know what I could go back to school for either. (But do I want to go back to school, and get even further into the student loan debt?) I’m not good in the sciences, I used to be good at math, and that’s gone, and those are really the only careers that are on the increase. And careers for people who desire to be managers and people of power in a corporation.
It’s times like this where I wish I could go back to being a kid, and the only decision I had to make was what character was I going to pretend to be while I “played school”. (Yes, I was a dork back then too).
I guess maybe the point of all this is to say, I want to blog but I have no motivation because I know I could be doing other things with that time. And I guess I’m saying, I’m looking for a non managerial Instructional Design position but also if anyone has any suggestions of careers or even classes I could look into leave them in the comments. (Shameless plug: My Resume website)
I have to say, I really loved reading this post. I’ve missed your blogging, but I totally get why your not motivated. I’ve had a number of careers, and I can tell you its never easy – changing, or trying to find a job doing what you’re trained to do. Eventually though, something just happened, and worked and clicked and I was okay. I’ve had my own unemployed stretches, and they’re tough.
I’ll sit here writing and sending good thoughts your way. Something good will come up, you deserve it! AND, you’re worth it
I want to give you a really really big huge hug right now.
And you know I know the whole losing my job thing wasn’t my fault, yet I have all the emotions of guilt, sadness, anger, to a degree happiness because I’m not wondering is this the month it’s going to happen. I just need to let myself trust that something will come along that is an amazing fit for me, and it will be awesome. It just feels weird because after pretty much doing nothing (no new work projects for over a year before I was laid off) and trying to figure out ways, I can brush up on skills without spending ridiculous amounts of money is hard.
There is something in PA where I can try and apply for $3500 in training money but it has to be on their approved list in the county I live in. So I’m trying to weigh all those things out and maybe something there will pop up.
I definitely feel your pain on this. I’ve been unemployed for, lets say longer than i’d care to admit to. And the job search is very tough. I keep having these near misses, of almost landing a great opportunity and then not getting it. My thinking is that these instances mean that the opportunity just wasn’t right for me and that something better is bound to come along.
I know that something great will come along for you soon. I know it’s easier said than done, but keep your chin up. Fingers crossed that something works out for you soon.
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Thank you for the kind words. I know I’ve only been unemployed for a short time and it’s the worst. Yes, the job search is horrible, and with the fact that I have to abide by all these rules to keep getting my unemployment is so stressful, when I know I’m getting to that point there aren’t anymore places to apply to in my field or anywhere that is in my skill set.
I kind of understand what your getting at when it comes to the lack of skills sets. I think though, one of the things that made me mad as hell was how the writing department waited until after I graduated to add classes that might have actually given me any sort of skills to get me where I wanted to go in the publishing field. I’m thinking of emailing my college adviser and seeing if there’s a way I can go back to school, just to pick up some those courses, even if I have to wait another year to take them (since they’re only offered in the winter on even years).
I’ve also thought about going to a training school to get a certification as an expert in a few Adobe Programs. I’m not sure it would really get me anywhere, but the other part of me says something is better than nothing. I don’t know. Three years of struggling to get a publishing internship (because everyone is trying to get into the publishing houses for internships) has left me questioning what I want to do for a career and it’s a little unsettling.
The same thing happened to me too. They revamped both the music department and the mass communications department after I graduated. I also keep thinking of going and taking classes then I generally see the costs and go umm my return on investment isn’t enough to warrant the class.
It is very frustrating where you’ve worked for something in college and then the real world is like uhh, not so much.
When I was at GV they were constantly revamping the writing department. I think it’s the newest department we have at GV. If I recall correctly, the writing department started up in 2001. By the time I switched majors my sophomore year, they had already changed the writing major 2 times, and were in process of re-vamping it again when I switched over (they were asking for feedback when I took Intro Professional Writing, and what we were wanting to do with our writing degree when we graduated), and the 4 years after that. It’s gone from being split into Creative and Professional Writing to be a more general Writing degree and you take 3 “modules” out side of your core courses. It’s ridiculous, but at least it’s giving students the course options they need to get closer to where they want to go.
It’s actually kind of sad, because at least 1 of the courses now in the writing major was initially offered (and required) only for students who worked for the Writing center. I think it’s ridiculous that it’s come to
I had to become a double major in college because my mass communications major wouldn’t let non majors take classes in the department. When there were audio recording majors (who are music majors) that needed the film classes and the writing classes.
They need a real world 101 course in college.
Good luck to you. My husband has been going through this, as well. Looking for a job has become like a full time job for him, and sometimes, there is nothing new posted to apply for. These are hard times. Hang in there! You are not alone and I wish you the best.
Thank you. And good luck to your husband as well. Right now, I’m kind of looking around to see what options I have for going back to school and for what.