Jobs

How did yesterday go?  I would say it went as well as it could have.  I wasn’t expecting any offers of employment, obviously.  People were hiring, so that was promising.  If they are going to hire me is an entirely different question, but at least they have positions available.  This is especially important because according to the New York Times (11/07/09), the U.S. jobless rate has hit a 26 year high.

Now I do need to explicitly state that I do not include myself really in the jobless rate because I am not claiming unemployment. I have elected to be in the position I am in and I feel terrible for all the families that have someone who is out of work due to being laid off.  I have gone through that.  It is painful.

I can vividly remember the day my father was laid off. I believe that I was eleven years old and my mother picked me up from art class and told me that my father had been laid off.  In my memory, I think we knew it was coming or at least had braced ourselves for the potential.  I also highly doubt pre-teen me understood what unemployment and lost income even meant.  My dad was a nuclear engineer who worked as a civilian for the military mainly on aircraft carriers.  At the end of the Cold War, the U.S. government significantly cut back on its funding on nucs.  This eventually came to mean my father’s job at the time.  I don’t remember how long he was out of work and searching for a job.  He was rehired to work on nuclear submarines in Connecticut and we moved.  Eventually that job too fizzled out and he decided it was time to get out of working for the government and become a consultant.

It was an extremely stressful time for my parents. I am the youngest of 6 children.  Six children definitely are not cheap and I have to admit that we lived a luxurious life when I was a child.  We owed a large enough house that none of us shared bedrooms, we had a beach house, belonged to a country club, we went on wonderful vacations and definitely were dressed quite well.  I don’t remember ever really being told no to something (for reasons of money) while I was growing up.  We could take any class or extracurricular activity we wanted–art, piano, soccer, swimming, golf, etc.

And that definitely changed drastically. I have never known what my father made and I really do not care.  Maybe he made the same salary when we moved to Connecticut, maybe more, maybe less. I honestly have no idea.  But I do know that my parents had changed.  Money was definitely viewed differently after that.  It wasn’t taken for granted and I was told no if something cost too much.

That was okay with me.  I have never really been a person who demands material things.  I learned very quickly to earn my keep.  If I wanted to do something, then I needed to work to have that money.  If I wanted to buy something, I need to put in the effort to afford it.  I think my dad losing his job occurred at a very vulnerable time in my childhood but I do have to say I think it made me a better person.  I am a saver and I am a budgeter.  I have never had credit card issues because I do not buy something unless I already have earned the money to pay for it outright.  I also think that has made me appreciate what I have even more.

All in all, yesterday went well.  People are hiring, people took my resume.  I also went to the administrative offices for the schools in Loudoun so I can substitute teach and I got that ball moving forward.  That process is a whole other post in itself.

I’m encouraged and hopeful.

To Smile.