First-hand accounts of being unemployed
Before I begin, I must say that I’m aware of the hardships and pain that the Covid-19 pandemic has brought many people, and I don’t want to suggest that a pandemic of this scale is a good thing in any way. Having said that, I do also want to provide encouragement at a time when so many are facing financial struggles or who may have lost their jobs. There is a bright side! The ongoing pandemic can in fact present…
I was vying for a position as an Executive Assistant when I noticed someone had posted a Mitch Albom quote about miracles in my Facebook feed. “Miracles happen quietly every day – in an operating room, on a stormy sea, in the sudden appearance of a roadside stranger. They are rarely tallied. No one keeps score…” I spent my whole life trying to find miracles and it often backfired. I asked my boyfriend at the time, why I never seemed…
After I graduated from college, I stumbled, tripped, and smacked my face on a painful $50,000 debt bill. I went from being a young adult to a full-fledged debt payer in a matter of months. Living paycheck-to-paycheck in the hospitality industry is a whirlwind you feel like you’ll never get ahead of, especially when you have two degrees. I worked full-time at one restaurant and picked up another job to pay off my monthly loan payments. I had enough and…
It’s no secret that there’s a stigma surrounding mental health. We talk about mental health, advocate for it, and ask for more resources, but it seems that we are fighting a long, hard battle. Depression, anxiety, PTSD – can make us feel hopeless in fighting for anything at all, as feelings of shame and guilt overcome us. We often feel shunned and we don’t believe we are worthy of help because someone else always has it way worse. I’m here…
I prefer to look at it as deliberately not bothering to participate in capitalism rather than saying, “I’m unemployed”. It makes me feel like I’ve got a measure of agency in the fact that I’ve not had a “real” job in about five years. I had lost my last “real” job like so many others, ultimately because of an awful sleep disorder that at times is a mild inconvenience and at others a living hell with a combination of the…
1. Harrison Ford Embed from Getty Images Harrison Ford is no stranger to hard work. Having moved to Los Angeles in 1964 to pursue an acting career, Ford was disappointed early on by the slew of non-speaking, B-list roles he was given in Hollywood. By his late 20s, Ford was so underemployed as an actor that he decided to take up carpentry instead to support his then-wife and two children. It wasn’t until two years later that a young George…
Where are you living now? Well, I have resided in Ocala, FL for the last several years. I came up here from Polk County, FL in the summer of 2011. Because after 10+ years in Retailing and nearly 20 years in the Cosmetology industry, the nationwide recession had my options for work falling through. Disaster relief after a few quite strong hurricane seasons also had come kind of slow. Cosmetology was my passion, but although I was great at creating,…
I graduated from a well-ranked liberal-arts college and thought finding work would be… a cinch! I had majored in business—often touted as one of the most employable degrees—had a high GPA and sported a long list of scholarships and merit awards. There was no shortage of professors and former supervisors eager to give me glowing recommendations or references wherever needed. Best of all, I’d worked 9 internships, which was a ton of experience for a college graduate. People said that…
I was not your typical little kid. I didn’t crawl. I didn’t walk. I didn’t hold my head up very well. I didn’t dress myself or go to the bathroom without significant help from someone else. Fortunately, my parents set a pattern for my life by focusing on the things I did well. I was interested in everything. I enjoyed doing crafts, especially drawing, knitting and crocheting. I loved reading and thought I might become a writer someday. Before I…
Spouses of military members have unique challenges when it comes to finding employment. The unemployment rate for military spouses is reported to be nearly twice the rate for the overall U.S. population between 18 and 65. Combine this with higher rates of depression, alcohol abuse and divorce than their counterparts, and it can sometimes seem as if the military spouse is the one fighting a war. But there is hope! I am one of these military spouses, and I spent…