A is for Anxiety: The Unemployed Alphabet

Skyline Drive, Virginia

I wrote this to help others understand the anxiety of their unemployed friends and loved ones whose days are focused on trying to rebuild a major part of their identity and figure out how to survive.  

A is for Anxiety: what started the day you became unemployed and never entirely goes away.

B is for Bitter:  what you don’t want to be but border on when you see someone doing a bad job and being paid well to do it.

C is for Comfort:  what your good friends provide in a way that energizes and motivates you to keep on trying.

D is for Drive and Determination:  the inner strength you muster to sign up for a volunteer project, do a short term paid assignment in hopes of landing a full time job, drop everything to return a networking call, get up every morning and make it your job to find a job, contact every person in your address book to ask for their help, be willing to perform work far below your skill level, look and act like you are successful regardless of how you feel on the inside, or stuff your pride in your suitcase and work for $10 an hour if it helps make a contact or provides cash for next week's groceries.

E is for Everything:  what gets to you sometimes when the situation is just too overwhelming to break into manageable pieces.

Blue Heron, Florida

F is for Fear:  what haunts you at night and sometimes paralyzes you during the day.

G is for Goodness: what you really try to find in every situation because it helps you hold it together.

H is for Hard:  what every new conversation is that starts with “so what do you Want to do?”

I is for Industriousness: your ability to creatively engage and develop new skills to earn enough to keep you afloat.

J is for Jumpy: the constant feeling that something might happen; the anticipation of the phone ringing with good news or that you will wake up and find out this was simply a nightmare.

K is for Kindnesses and Kick in the pants:  the thoughtful acts, large and small, that make you smile, help move your resume in front of the right person or simply give you a hand with a difficult task; and the honest feedback and shove (kick) only your dearest friends will give to make you reach out one more time and make a call that is a little out of your comfort zone.

Big Cat Rescue, Florida

L is for Lonely:  the empty realization that you have to adjust to far more solitary time than you have ever had before.

M is for Mindless: the activities that you find yourself undertaking when you can’t take the pressure at the end of a long day of telephone calls, email, resume distribution and cover letter-writing.

N is for Nag:  what you want to do when someone promises to help you and fails to follow through but instead you just feel disappointed.

O is for Old:  how you feel when you see who is getting hired.

P is for Patience: what you never had enough of and what all this waiting is supposedly helping to develop.

Q is for Quit:  what you want to do when things get really hard but you don’t do because you trust that it will get better.

R is for Resume:  the two pages you have edited more frequently than any you have ever written and that still fail to adequately reflect all that you are.

S is for Stymied:  how you feel when you can’t figure out how to make the right connection for a job you know should be yours.

T is for Talent:  what you know you have, your resume reflects and the right person hasn’t noticed yet.

U is for Understanding:  what your friends and family try to be but really can’t unless they have been there.

V is for Victorious: how you will feel when you get hired.

W is for Waiting:  what you spend a lot of time doing that is supposedly developing all that patience you need.

X is for eXercise:  the way to release tension and ensure you look your best – and the last thing you feel like doing when you are depressed and down on yourself.

Y is for  Yawn:  your reaction when one more person suggests a minor change in the resume that has been edited a thousand times already.

Z is for Zillions: the number of times you have focused on what you have to be thankful for rather than on what you aren’t.

Happy dog, winter walk, C&O Canal, Maryland