Besides stressing the finances, feeling like a shiftless loser and wishing I had chosen a different profession, the worst thing for me about being unemployed is not knowing what to do every day.
When I was working I knew exactly what I needed to do each day, and the first thing I would do is check email. There would be lots of them, most emails I had sent yesterday would have replies by this morning, and one might even contain some really big news for me to jump on immediately. Before my first cup of coffee was finished I would be totally involved in my productive, salary-earning day, and if I was on deadline as usual, your email to me that was unsolicited or not urgent might need to wait until later for a reply.
I still check email first thing but doing so is now fraught with angstful issues. Today I happen to be hoping for a reply to an email I sent yesterday following up on a job I applied for last week, so just watching my mail load is pretty trepidatious because what if there's no reply, or worse, what if there is a reply but it's rejection? Or possibly worse, a good-news/bad-news reply, like an offer of less than half your former salary?
There's no reply.
But as I write this, new emails do trickle in every few minutes to top off the angst tank.
I have some friends, some of whom still have jobs, who are keeping an eye out for work leads they might forward to me, and I also belong to several professional associations (a couple of which have dues coming due that I need to worry about paying) that have email job postings.
So if a job posting actually arrives that looks potentially appropriate for me, I can swiftly switch gears to angsting over how I can compete for the position with my simultaneously-terminated colleagues who are better geographically situated, who I need to know at the employer to get my resume noticed, and what the odds are that it even likely pays a fair salary. Then it's on to fretfully composing a cover letter about my least favorite topic-- myself-- knowing full well that there is no chance in hell that my writing on that topic could possibly reflect my science news writing and producing abilities. That best-case scenario is extremely rare these days-- it's happened exactly once since I lost my job.
More frequent but still rare, a posting or lead comes in for which I am apparently over-qualified. In that case I first spend a while and some excess energy deliberating my desperation level before proceeding to the above procedure. That has happened a couple of times in the 3 months I've been unemployed.
More frequent than that is more evidence that it's not just my job and not just my career but my entire profession that's vanishing, like this in my inbox yesterday:
"Research Penn State's Web magazine, www.rps.psu.edu, is looking for a
freelancer to write an article for its column Probing Question.
http://www.rps.psu.edu/probing/more.html Approx. 500 words on a timely
question with mainstream appeal, quoting a relevant Penn State expert.
We pay $200 per article. Please send a couple writing samples or links
to..."
$200 for 500 words. The "going rate" for freelance reporters paid by actual journalism outlets used to be $1 a word, and you would be able to charge more than that for "PR" work, not way less.
The idea of voluntarily contributing to that devaluation along with the prospect of having to wonder when and if you will actually be paid anything at all makes the thought of becoming desperate enough to even consider freelancing enough to trigger some serious nicotine craving.
And by far most common lately is this moment's situation, that being no new leads at all.
That task completed, I can get back to stressing the finances, feeling like a shiftless loser, wishing I had chosen a different profession, and praying that God will let me know load & clear when he opens that window.
The scoop on ice cream in Central New York
2 years ago
Doing a one-off freelance assignment could also threaten your unemployment benefits if you're not mindful. I did a freelance writing piece that basically took me a day to report and write. When I filed my unemployment benefits claim the next Wednesday, I answered honestly to the question, "How many days have you worked in the past week (including self-employment)?"
ReplyDeleteA few weeks later I got a letter from NYSDOL with a form for me to fill out, asking who I worked for and when. The other side of the form was for my "new employer" to fill out (the instruction was for me to return the form to NYSDOL and they would send it along to the new employer) and it said something like: "The following person claims he/she worked for you but is no longer employed. You are therefore responsible for unemployment insurance benefits for this person" etc., and had a bunch of stuff to that effect for them to fill out (start/end dates, etc).
So basically with one day of freelance work I was delivered a form that could have prompted my benefits to be stopped if I were confused enough to write the name/address of the "employer" in it. Luckily I had the presence of mind to just write on it that the employer was me -- it was one day of self-employment -- and that I am still unemployed and without a job.