Joining the ranks of the unemployed is never something anyone plans, and it’s usually not a whole lot of fun. Especially right now. There was a time where getting laid off was scary, but you knew that if you worked hard, you’d find another job. Now its a bit different. You get laid off, and no matter how hard you may work, you still might not find a job.

I was recently laid off. I knew it was coming. I was warned back in January to start looking. I looked. I looked some more. I kept on looking right up until I got laid off, nearly six months later. Not one single bite the entire time. My only saving grace in this whole thing is that I worked hard to get my debt down to a manageable level while looking for a new job… just in case. So, while I still have bills every month which I have to pay, I can hopefully manage most of them with my severance, savings, and unemployment benefits.

What I’ve been thinking a lot about is how many people are out there going through this same thing. Have they been able to find jobs? The people I know have had frighteningly dismal stories about their job searches. When the unemployed look for jobs, are we all just looking for something… anything… to get hired and get back to a steady paycheck? If so, what will that do to the economy long-term- to have a bunch of people in the wrong job because they’re either over-qualified or took something they don’t like (and therefore won’t excel at) just for the paycheck? I’m not downplaying the importance of being able to feed your family. Everyone has to do what they have to to get by, but are we doing the right thing for ourselves, and for the economy as a whole if we aren’t thoughtful about our job search?

All of these things have made me contemplate many aspects of my own career. Do I really like the environmental science niche I got stuck in the last 5 years (took a job after a lay-off that was quite a divergence from my original career path)? Do I want to stay in my field at all? I mean, now I don’t seem to have the “just right” skill set for anything that interests me. Do I want to work for someone else? If I start up a business, am I prepared to deal with the hassle of taxes, health insurance, and everything else? Most importantly, what can I see myself doing for the next five or ten years (minimum)? It’s not like I have an eternity to figure this out, but I really want to get it right this time! I would like my next journey to be the path that I want to be on, not the path that I took because it was the simplest and most logical at the time.

After being an employed professional for the last ten or so years, I often think about a line in the movie American Beauty, when Kevin Spacey’s character goes through the drive-thru at the fast food joint and asks for an application. He makes a statement about wanting “a job with the least amount of responsibility possible”. I know that sounds lazy… and maybe even lame, but as I get older, I think more and more about how to simplify my life. A big part of that is how to make sure work isn’t something that inundates me with stress and bullshit politics, ties up my thoughts while I’m not even at work, and drains my soul. I suppose that is the cost of a high-paying professional job- you get all the baggage that goes along with it. I’m not so sure that it’s lazy or lame to consider a new job that means no stress and baggage. At the same time, if I take a job without the baggage and earn a fraction of what I’ve been earning, how do I justify the college education I got? Can I justify the fact that I still have thousands of dollars left to pay on it, and will be paying on it for another 10 to 15 years?

I don’t know what the right answer is to any of these questions. I suspect that many other unemployed people out there are contemplating all these same things… at least I hope you are. Otherwise, my sanity may be in doubt.

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