Posts Tagged ‘unemployment’

March 4th, 2010 Word of the decade: Reinvention

Yesterday I spent the afternoon with a friend reviewing our resumes and bemoaning the state of  working for a living in a world gone mad. We compiled all our collective wisdom, and painful experiences, and advice we’ve gathered from others, and still could not make sense of it. I concluded that the only comfort one can derive from this situation is in communing with others for whom the experience is the same. When you can bear witness to other brave souls finding a way to live without losing their humor or desire to be who they really are, then there is hope. There are millions of us. Yes, it is unfathomable.

That leads me to yet another realization. The business of giving aid to job seekers is a mushrooming industry! No surprise there. In fact, I find myself part of it as well, and I have to admit it intrigues me.

After reviewing my resume Chris told me: “You’ve reinvented yourself.” I quickly added: “Yes, but I’m still in the process, and I’m still not ‘there’ yet.” And here is where the real object lesson comes into play.

Are we now, as many people have already concluded, living in a world where long-term employment of say, three years or more, is a thing of the past from here on out? If that is true, are we ready to live in a world of constant work search? If that is also true, then war, health care, the elderly and the recurringly unemployed could easily suck the economy dry in our life times. If we could delete just one of those, say, war, we could fund the nation’s well-being so much better. But I digress…
I love being part of this industry. My reinvention has been transformative in ways I can hardly comprehend. Five years into it and I can finally say it has been for the better, but I’m still in uncharted territory, and I’ve got lots of company.

The other night I was at a networking event and more than one person I was talking with was wondering: How can this economy settle into anything reasonably sustainable when you have literally millions of adults constantly going in and out of cycles of work and non-work?

This much is certain: No one knows.