Help Yourself

For many this pandemic offers a high level of tedium in a new and formerly comfortable setting. If you had already been in the habit of staying close to home leaving mostly for work or family obligations, that is now highlighted. If you weren’t doing shit on either front, nothing has changed. As someone marginally employed, employed in fits and spurts, or otherwise unattached to the business end of the new economy it is some ways a relief. Fewer expectations. 

Programmed to avoid relaxation, I started doing a job search figuring that now rejections sting less. Rejections is the wrong word. They aren’t really doing that anymore. The schtick is, on the prospective employer side, apparently to collect as many resumes as possible and after a few months of of stringing on women, minorities, new grads, people who look over 35, people with hard to pronounce names, and AA degree holders hire someone who reminds the interviewer of his younger self. I’m not seeing this process work for people I know is what I mean to say. But I’ve been looking to make a career change since I left my career the first time in 2007 fell into again a decade later and then left it again. 

The online literature for the mature woman on career change and re-invention seemed discouraging but only because no reporter contacted anyone on the subject who wasn’t a coach selling career coaching packages or some broad (for effect!) who had managed the tricky transition from model/actress to handbag designer. It puts you off handbags. Or worse, stories of women who transitioned from big law or big finance into non-profits or arts jobs in the low sixes that others from below were fighting to get. Or maybe after a decade of smash and grab they are ready to sweep some crumbs onto the floor by becoming a teacher for a minute. Or even worse, they wrote a book on it and how you can do it, too. Maybe there is an all day conference to attend where you can get a tote bag and see the rest of the strivers in a stadium during normal working hours. Well you can’t though because the tickets cost more than a few days work. Know that. I’m past that. A few years ago someone was brave enough to go out there and interview some regular women, the kind that support themselves and don’t have “contacts” but thought that it was high time that they pursued their dreams before it was too late and they were 40 and just went and had the kid so they would have an accomplishment. Talk about eye-opening investigative reporting. All had failed or were in the process of failing and they were brutally honest about it like they were trying to warn a friend. Or maybe the woman who put the article together was trying to. 

I only have one self-help book. It’s not bad. Every once and a while I pick it up and go through the motions of the exercises. I found it years ago when we used to go to boutique hotels, before everyone started staying in other people’s apartments on vacation. I don’t know how popular a seller it was, but I can’t imagine that it was that popular. For one, it is based in realism. The examples are of people who were tired of plodding down the same path for a decade or more. All of them were intelligent, high functioning, and not in any real debt but also not confident that they could make a change or were in a position to do so. They were also not reaching for the stars, I’d say they were reaching for the lightbulbs. The path suggested by the book was pragmatic; doing research and so forth on the new thing you want to do, reviewing your lifestyle and finances, making a plan and so on. None of this “I want to be a lion tamer” shite. The people who wrote the book had had success, funded by a small inheritance (ding, ding, ding!), in creating some kind of condiment and then later opening up a bar and restaurant in the Caribbean. I imagine this was somewhat easier in the days before this kind of business was the subject of multiple reality tv shows, but still it is commendable. Go to any island retreat now and you will see a brisk high-turnover trade in the owning of a beach bar/eatery. It’s possible that selling the dream of owning the bar is the real business. The money-making is for the brokers and I am sure there is some connection between being called a broker and helping people go broke as they pour their decade’s saving down a thatched roof seasonal money pit. 

Real estate is always hiring but I can’t imagine that that is anyone’s dream. The dream is the money and early retirement. I wonder what brokers want to transition to. Are there self-help books instructing those in real estate, banking, and model-acting or whatever air-hosting (sic) is on how to get out of such lucrative and exciting professions for something, anything, more useful to society. Big pharma is also always hiring. A casual look through linkedin suggests that people aren’t exactly lining up. Another discouraging piece I read about job searches for black women, spoiler alert no one wants to hire them regardless of qualifications, suggested that that’s where they should look along with other disfavored sectors. What a slap in the face, and the piece was written by black women for black women. Hey, I know you worked hard in undergrad and are still working on those loans for B-school, you are qualified, you got the skills, and your weave cost a fortune but...HR. That’s as good as self-help as it’s going to get for that cohort. I’m glad I can add to that with a few more demographic excuses like old age and several liberal arts degrees, two from state schools.