The Dangers of Seaside Soul-Searching

It has recently come to my attention (thanks Mom!) that I have no idea what I want to do with my life. There, I’ve said it. I had inklings of this purposelessness when relatives or friends asked me about the type of job I’m looking for (“Uh, I dunno, something with writing and, uh, helping people”) but for the most part I’d been able to ignore the lack of direction in my life. Sure, it made my job hunt rather difficult when I didn’t actually know what type of work I was looking for, but things have a habit of falling into place, right?

And while I now feel comfortable with the idea that I need to just pick a direction and go instead of sending out two resumes a month to my dream jobs, this was not the case a few days ago.

You see, it all started earlier this week after I spent a morning at my local library conducting another job search. I was feeling jazzed about the potential tutoring positions I had found in Washington D.C. (because why not?) but my mom didn’t quite seem to share my enthusiasm. As she pressed me for further details about the openings I had researched, I flopped face-first onto a leather couch in our living room next to the ironing board where she was pressing the wrinkles out of my dad’s work shirts. After mumbling a few answers into the couch cushions I sensed my mom putting down the iron and picking up another shirt.

“Now, I’m not trying to be facetious or anything” she said, as the iron exhaled a puff of steam, “but do you have any idea what you want to do with your life?”

And that was when it appeared: one of those black clouds that hangs over your head to signal the dreaded what-am-I-doing-with-my-life-funk, which in my experience can last anywhere from a few hours to multiple weeks. So partially out of spite, and partially because I didn’t have an answer, I laid there silently until I got up a few minutes later and did the most adult thing I could think to do:

I got on my bike and ran away from home.

Call me delusional but I thought maybe, just maybe, taking my Black Cloud by surprise would deaden its effect. Unfortunately, I quickly discovered it’s not the sort of weather pattern you can escape by simply sneaking off on your bike, even if you are tearing around the suburbs at top speeds of six or eight miles per hour.

Fine, I thought logically, maybe I can’t out-bike this funk. But there’s no reason I can’t hide from it. And you know what? I really did make a valiant effort to fall off the face of the earth, at least for a few hours. Because after my ten minute dash to a local park, I locked up my bike and began to follow a well-pounded path to the beach. I thought maybe I could lose myself in the forest and the ocean-side reeds, but those pesky thoughts of my directionless future just would not take the hint.

Another ten minutes on foot and I arrived at the shore. In my experience at this particular park (read: I once watched my brother sink up to his knees in low-tide mud) I removed my beat up blue Vans rather than risk losing them to the muck. I began to trudge through the sand, squish across the mud and, when I was lucky enough, cross the marshy canals on a plank of driftwood left by some thoughtful beachcomber who came before me.

After I picked my way through various sea grasses and narrowly avoided getting a piece of sea glass lodged in my foot, I came to a small river that I eagerly forded and, plopping down dramatically on the sand, heaved a sigh of relief. I had finally arrived at the island my younger brother and I discovered a few years ago, a secluded beach where we had seen decaying signs of human life but never another flesh-and-blood human amidst the scores of swallows and egrets.

As I sat staring out at the bay I suddenly realized I didn’t even know what I was doing there. I wasn’t sure if I had fled for the beach as a means of ignoring my purposelessness, or if I had hoped the beach would create the sort of tranquil environment that I imagined might be conducive to discovering one’s purpose in life.

Dammit! I thought. Not only am I wandering around completely purposeless, I don’t even know how to be properly angsty about my purposelessness! I turned this conundrum over in my mind and, as I dug my heels into the sand, decided I wouldn’t leave until I’d resolved the issue and found my purpose.

A few minutes into my brooding, though, a beautiful seashell caught my eye and I obviously felt the need to wander over and inspect it. I actually became quite preoccupied with rinsing the sand out of my shell and attempting to poke out the rotting remnants of whatever used to live in there, thus ending any pretense of further soul-searching that day. Besides, the sun was setting, the park would close at dusk and an army of sand-fleas had launched an attack on my bare ankles and feet. As I pedaled the familiar route back to my house, I couldn’t help but think that no matter how existentially lost I feel right now, there’s comfort in the fact that I always seem to know the direction home.

No way, I mentally scolded myself. That is damn cheesy. Don’t even think about ending a blog post like that.

The Girl Who Cried Unemployment

“You are not unemployed.”

“Excuse me?” I nearly choked on my salad. “Of course I’m unemployed.”

“No, you are not unemployed. You were never employed to begin with, so you can’t be unemployed now.” I started to speak, but my Dad pressed on with his argument. “Look at my friend X, he’s been searching for a job for three years now but he’s still out of work. X is unemployed.” My Dad speared a tomato with his fork. “You are not unemployed.”

Thus went our conversation at the family dinner table, a verbal sparring match in which my Dad told me why, for various reasons, I couldn’t label myself as unemployed while I vehemently argued that I was most definitely unemployed.

In my mind, unemployment was quite simply defined as a period of time in one’s life without a job that provides a steady, reliable income. Exhibit A: me. My Dad, however, felt that unemployment necessarily follows a period of employment at an Important Adult Full-Time Job.

I turned to Google to settle our argument and, as it turns out, myriad and contradictory definitions of unemployment abound on the internet as well. Unemployment insurance in my home state of New York, for example, is intended “For eligible workers who lose their jobs through no fault of their own” but are “ready, willing, and able to work.”  The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), on the other hand, defines unemployment more narrowly by claiming that the unemployed are those who “do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks, and are currently available for work.”

According to New York state, then, I’m not unemployed. At my last job I signed a contract fully aware that my employment would end two months after my start date, so I guess it is indeed through a fault of my own that I no longer have a steady source of income. But if, just for kicks, I define myself by BLS standards then I am considered unemployed because I have searched for a job within the last four weeks and boy am I ever currently available for work.

And that’s just generally how we define “unemployment.” Within that category are so many sub-categories of unemployment it’s a wonder that anyone in this country can actually claim to have a job. First there are the long-term unemployed who the BLS defines as those who have spent over 27 weeks without a job. (Excellent, something I can look forward to.) Then there are seasonal and part-time workers who seem to fall into the category of “sort of unemployed” because while they have a steady income, part-timers are characterized by a desire to work more hours or to find that elusive long-term, full-time job.

Adding to the confusion, though, is a group known in BLS jargon as the workers who are “marginally attached” to the labor force because they haven’t searched for a job in the last four weeks. A depressing subcategory of the marginally attached is a group officially known as “discouraged workers” who have stopped looking for work because they “believe no jobs are available for them.”

Despite this smorgasbord of labels I discovered in my research I still didn’t feel like I fit into any of them. I’m not a discouraged worker (yet), and I am more than marginally attached to the labor force. After a little more stealthy Googling, though, I came upon my answer:

I am an unemployed youth and part of the American youth labor force, classified as all 16- to 24-year-olds who are employed or seeking employment, including many college graduates who “enter the labor market to look for or begin permanent unemployment.”

See? I told you so: I am too unemployed.

My fascination with identifying myself as unemployed, however, began to bother me and as I thought more about why I so vehemently wanted to be considered unemployed the answer shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did.

I am a white, middle-class, college-educated woman; I am a deeply privileged job-hunter. I can afford to call my blog the Jubilant Job Hunter because I am able flit from one job-posting to the next on my laptop, heave a sigh when I don’t find anything worth pursuing and go downstairs to join my family for dinner, placing my job search on hold because it doesn’t feel like a few days’ delay will make a difference.

It sometimes seems that there is a phenomenon among the “privileged” where there is a desire to associate themselves with the “underprivileged” – in this case the truly unemployed, who have sought employment without any success and maybe have factors actively working against their ability to secure a job – in order to abandon the responsibilities of one’s privilege when it is convenient.

My LinkedIn profile does not list me as “unemployed” but rather as an alumna of my alma mater. But when I don’t want that privilege for whatever reason (most often when I feel guilty about the fact that I’m still living off of my parents) I claim that I am “unemployed” to evoke that image of someone in dire straits who has spent weeks or months looking for work in order to let myself off easy rather than admitting that I have a responsibility to be working harder to find a job.

I’m now realizing that this whole business of crying “unemployment” when I don’t want to take ownership for my half-hearted job-search efforts is not only unproductive but will probably (and rightfully) aggravate those who have spent far longer searching for a job, unsuccessfully, and maybe don’t share the same privileges I do.

So there you go, Dad. Just this once you were right. I’m not unemployed.

On Parachutes, Multicolored and Golden

I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this, but I think it’s time to have the Parachute Conversation.

Ever since I began my job search a few months ago, parachutes just seem to be popping up everywhere. It all began the day before my college graduation when, out of nowhere, my mom produced a gift bag overflowing with colorful tissue paper. “Here,” she said, handing me the bag. “We wanted to give you your graduation present now before things get too crazy tomorrow.” I gingerly removed the paper and pulled out a hefty tome entitled What Color Is Your Parachute? A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career Changers, by Richard “Dick” Bolles. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this text, What Color Is Your Parachute? is the seminal job-search bible that has been around for forty some-odd years and is actually part job-hunting advice and part therapy session.

Putting my gratitude in the form of a question, I looked at my mom and said “Oh… thank you?” thinking it was gag gift. I hadn’t even received my fancy new English degree yet, and already she was nagging me about finding a job. It had to be a joke, right?

It turns out she wasn’t kidding and it was a capital-A awkward way to begin graduation weekend.

My mom proceeded to defend her gift, though, telling me that she had also received What Color Is Your Parachute? when she graduated from college and that she truly believed it would benefit me to read through it. Fortunately, a few days after graduation I found out I had gotten a temp position working at my university for the summer so it was back off to school for a few months, where I could conduct my job search in peace.

One evening, after a few delightful weeks of procrastination, I decided I was finally in a good enough mood to sit down and read through my graduation present with an open mind. I promised myself that I would look beyond the cheesy self-help nature of the writing and seek out the concrete job-search advice Mr. Bolles had to offer. Unfortunately, I didn’t even make it past the table of contents before indulging in an exaggerated eye-roll as I saw the name of the first chapter I would read: “How to Find Hope.”

I know, I know, I’m being terribly unreasonable and defensive because, really, who doesn’t love to be force-fed positivity and optimism?

It is worth noting, though, that many books and blogs dealing with unemployment seem to fall into a few distinct categories. On the one hand, there is a breed of writers with a more inspirational bent to their prose, people like Mr. Bolles and Kerry Quinn, who wrote the ebook FUNemployed: Finding the Upside in the Downturn, which vows to spread the gospel of Ms. Quinn’s “FUNemployed philosophy.”

And while I find Quinn’s “FUNemployment” and Bolles’s colorful parachute metaphor to be fairly innocuous, if somewhat dorky, thorns in my side, I find myself slightly more bewildered by those who have written about their unemployment experiences comfortably tethered to a golden parachute. And believe me, it’s nothing personal; it’s just that as a recent college graduate with the tiniest of nest eggs, I can’t even fathom what it’s like to advertise your unemployment blog as one fellow blogger did with the tagline “Just another casualty of corporate layoffs looking for a good way to squander my severance” on her blog Adventures in Funemployment.

But who knows, maybe there was also a period of time when that blogger woke up every day and stared at the ceiling of her childhood bedroom and thought “I wish I could wake up to the ceiling of a place other than my childhood bedroom, but I have no money.” And so, for the purpose of maintaining a friendly blogging environment and keeping my jealousy in check, we’ll operate under the impression that my fellow bloggers’ golden parachutes and severance packages were hard-earned and that they deserve their funemployment.

So if it isn’t multicolored or golden, you might ask, what exactly does my unemployment parachute look like? I’ll leave to none other than Wikipedia to elaborate:

“Parachuting may or may not involve a certain amount of free-fall, a time during which the parachute has not been deployed and the body gradually accelerates to terminal velocity.” So there you have it. It seems that you and I both would like to know what my parachute looks like but while we’re in this seemingly interminable free fall, I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.