Help, I'm Alive
Nov. 4th, 2025 09:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jakebeThe clock has finally run out. After 50 applications, two interview rounds, and two final-round rejections, I'm officially unemployed.
The first near-miss was for the internal position at my former company. I would have learned to be a Metrology Technician, making sure the instruments we use for measurements in the field were operating accurately. It sounded like a fun job, even though it would have meant driving to a remote business park five days a week.
This latest near-miss was a customer service position for a waste recycling company. It was, alas, another in-office job in an out-of-the-way business park, but the commute would have been a lot shorter. I would have had to deal with a few unhappy customers, but otherwise it sounded like a pretty comfortable position in a small, tight-knit industry. *Perfect* for someone in the middle of their career, looking for a place to invest in until retirement. I would have really liked that foot in the door.
Alas, it was not to be. I had the phone screen on Oct. 21, the Tuesday of my last week. We scheduled the in-person interview for my last day at the old job, Fri Oct. 24. The next Monday (Oct. 27), they asked for and called my professional references. It happened so fast, and I allowed myself to actually dream of how I'd have to reshape my routine to accommodate the commute -- and what I would do with my severance pay instead of banking it to live for the next few months.
But then, no word from the hiring manager all that week. I broke first and asked when we could talk about next steps; she responded that she had made the difficult decision to go with someone else on Halloween.
So that's that. The dream of a "week's vacation" unemployment gone in a snap. It hurt, but I'm also encouraged that my belief in myself feels justified. If you get me in front of people, and I could really see myself being fulfilled in a position, I can be pretty persuasive. I know I can land a position -- it's just a matter of getting in touch with a real person.
I think this means going the extra mile to reach out to any "real" person I can when I submit my application. If I can follow up with a LinkedIn message or email to the hiring manager, it feels worth it to take that step. It feels like the difference-maker in this round of searching really will be the connections I'm able to make through the search. Maybe one of the "active practice" aspects to take on for a while is networking -- keeping in touch with folks and their projects, being a cheerleader in people's lives, and doing small things to assist and connect people. Even if it doesn't really translate to immediate employment, it's the kind of skill I've always wanted to develop -- the kind of person I've always wanted to be.
This week I'm just trying to get a better sense of how to set my priorities, how long it actually takes to achieve the things on my to-do list, and how to establish the most efficient workflow for those various priorities. I've finally refilled my Adderall prescription and taken my (now-annual?) 'are you on drugs' urine test, so I think I'm in a good position to really knuckle down for the next two months.
I'd like to start with the basics: regular meditation, reviving my reading and writing habit, becoming more mindful about what I take in, what occupies my thoughts. I'm not entirely sure where it happened, but my sense of fascination with people has practically died and the...emotional fulfillment I get with connection is so much harder to come by. But then, I'm not sure I really get much emotional fulfillment out of anything any more. That sounds so much worse than I mean it to be.
It's more...the tender, open, beating heart that forms a genuine connection with say, strangers, is so buried under protective instincts and scar tissue it's hard to access it. So much of my energy goes to protecting myself from crippling pain that it's hard to think about reaching the pain in other people. I don't want to feel that. I'm too busy blocking my own in order to survive.
And the result has made me stranded in isolation, at a real loss to find my way back. It feels like I've spent ten years cutting out so many of the ties I've built when they turned out to be rotten or false. I put my faith in the wrong people so many times, it feels especially dangerous to trust others with any tender part of me. So maybe I have this unconscious assumption that "being alone is better than having to carve out a part of yourself to let go of someone who's gotten their hooks into you". There's not much of me left, and I feel too hollow to give any more of myself to anyone else.
But holy Frith, that's not the kind of person I want to be. D:
I've cracked open The Complex Grief Handbook (thanks, BB) this morning after thinking about that ended friendship in the last post and how much the...lack of empathy for our shared pain over the loss of our mothers created this rift that grew until it severed our relationship. But then, the thread that pulled out of that was about all the loss I've endured.
My parents' divorce when I was 9. My sister running away without a word one day and disappearing for 3 months when I was 14. My dad walking out into a blizzard and disappearing forever when I was 16. Losing my faith when I was 17. Being disowned by my mom when I was 19. The disastrous end of my relationship with a fascist loudmouth when I was 22. Leaving the support network I had built to move to CA when I was 26. My sister dying of a fentanyl overdose when I was 35. Trump at 36. COVID at 40. Mom's death at 42. My first layoff at 43. Trump II at 44. And now, my second layoff at 45.
Hit after hit after hit. I'm not sure how much I'm over any of it, especially since so much of my recent loss has reawakened these survival mechanisms I used back during my earliest days. It feels like every time I think I've processed something, some other disorienting event knocks me right back into some previous trauma behavior. I don't want to be trapped in a forever-cycle of regression whenever something bad happens. Because, between you and me, if you look around you a lot of bad things will keep happening. We're setting ourselves up to lose a lot. And if I want to be here for people, I'm going to have to learn better how to manage loss.
The first near-miss was for the internal position at my former company. I would have learned to be a Metrology Technician, making sure the instruments we use for measurements in the field were operating accurately. It sounded like a fun job, even though it would have meant driving to a remote business park five days a week.
This latest near-miss was a customer service position for a waste recycling company. It was, alas, another in-office job in an out-of-the-way business park, but the commute would have been a lot shorter. I would have had to deal with a few unhappy customers, but otherwise it sounded like a pretty comfortable position in a small, tight-knit industry. *Perfect* for someone in the middle of their career, looking for a place to invest in until retirement. I would have really liked that foot in the door.
Alas, it was not to be. I had the phone screen on Oct. 21, the Tuesday of my last week. We scheduled the in-person interview for my last day at the old job, Fri Oct. 24. The next Monday (Oct. 27), they asked for and called my professional references. It happened so fast, and I allowed myself to actually dream of how I'd have to reshape my routine to accommodate the commute -- and what I would do with my severance pay instead of banking it to live for the next few months.
But then, no word from the hiring manager all that week. I broke first and asked when we could talk about next steps; she responded that she had made the difficult decision to go with someone else on Halloween.
So that's that. The dream of a "week's vacation" unemployment gone in a snap. It hurt, but I'm also encouraged that my belief in myself feels justified. If you get me in front of people, and I could really see myself being fulfilled in a position, I can be pretty persuasive. I know I can land a position -- it's just a matter of getting in touch with a real person.
I think this means going the extra mile to reach out to any "real" person I can when I submit my application. If I can follow up with a LinkedIn message or email to the hiring manager, it feels worth it to take that step. It feels like the difference-maker in this round of searching really will be the connections I'm able to make through the search. Maybe one of the "active practice" aspects to take on for a while is networking -- keeping in touch with folks and their projects, being a cheerleader in people's lives, and doing small things to assist and connect people. Even if it doesn't really translate to immediate employment, it's the kind of skill I've always wanted to develop -- the kind of person I've always wanted to be.
This week I'm just trying to get a better sense of how to set my priorities, how long it actually takes to achieve the things on my to-do list, and how to establish the most efficient workflow for those various priorities. I've finally refilled my Adderall prescription and taken my (now-annual?) 'are you on drugs' urine test, so I think I'm in a good position to really knuckle down for the next two months.
I'd like to start with the basics: regular meditation, reviving my reading and writing habit, becoming more mindful about what I take in, what occupies my thoughts. I'm not entirely sure where it happened, but my sense of fascination with people has practically died and the...emotional fulfillment I get with connection is so much harder to come by. But then, I'm not sure I really get much emotional fulfillment out of anything any more. That sounds so much worse than I mean it to be.
It's more...the tender, open, beating heart that forms a genuine connection with say, strangers, is so buried under protective instincts and scar tissue it's hard to access it. So much of my energy goes to protecting myself from crippling pain that it's hard to think about reaching the pain in other people. I don't want to feel that. I'm too busy blocking my own in order to survive.
And the result has made me stranded in isolation, at a real loss to find my way back. It feels like I've spent ten years cutting out so many of the ties I've built when they turned out to be rotten or false. I put my faith in the wrong people so many times, it feels especially dangerous to trust others with any tender part of me. So maybe I have this unconscious assumption that "being alone is better than having to carve out a part of yourself to let go of someone who's gotten their hooks into you". There's not much of me left, and I feel too hollow to give any more of myself to anyone else.
But holy Frith, that's not the kind of person I want to be. D:
I've cracked open The Complex Grief Handbook (thanks, BB) this morning after thinking about that ended friendship in the last post and how much the...lack of empathy for our shared pain over the loss of our mothers created this rift that grew until it severed our relationship. But then, the thread that pulled out of that was about all the loss I've endured.
My parents' divorce when I was 9. My sister running away without a word one day and disappearing for 3 months when I was 14. My dad walking out into a blizzard and disappearing forever when I was 16. Losing my faith when I was 17. Being disowned by my mom when I was 19. The disastrous end of my relationship with a fascist loudmouth when I was 22. Leaving the support network I had built to move to CA when I was 26. My sister dying of a fentanyl overdose when I was 35. Trump at 36. COVID at 40. Mom's death at 42. My first layoff at 43. Trump II at 44. And now, my second layoff at 45.
Hit after hit after hit. I'm not sure how much I'm over any of it, especially since so much of my recent loss has reawakened these survival mechanisms I used back during my earliest days. It feels like every time I think I've processed something, some other disorienting event knocks me right back into some previous trauma behavior. I don't want to be trapped in a forever-cycle of regression whenever something bad happens. Because, between you and me, if you look around you a lot of bad things will keep happening. We're setting ourselves up to lose a lot. And if I want to be here for people, I'm going to have to learn better how to manage loss.
