The Story of My Unemployed Life

Well, hello there and thanks for surfing my wave!
 
This, my friends, is how and why you are reading this today; a first-hand testimonial that if it looks good, sounds good, smells good – it’s all good.  Go For It!
 
I was still getting paid to work (unlike today when I’m working harder than ever…without the paid part) and hating every minute of it.  I called it House Arrest; a job where the wardens let you out each night, but if you didn’t return the following day EXACTLY @9AM, into the HR office you’d go.  Not a second early or late.  No questions, no excuses, no answers; yes, Sir – sorry, Sir!  And, just let me add that you had to be parked, already in your office with the lights and computer on, having obtained your first cup of coffee by 9. This was a global entertainment firm, no less.  This was clearly not entertaining.  I was a Pawn on a chess board that no matter where you’d move, Checkmate.  How do you checkmate a pawn?  Cheesy Corporate Lawyers.  Loathsome creatures and heartless inhabitants.  What far-out planet or island is this?
 
Be careful what you wish for…
 
Now it was no secret that I started looking for a different situation soon after I started in 2001, but the cursory search I did effort proved naught.  What could I do that would allow me to remain in my position and get me to branch out a little to springboard out from under?  Technology was all the rage; yea, that’s gonna fly in my world.  The way the Company worked, think Haunted Mansion Elevator: “This chamber has no windows and no doors…which offers you this chilling challenge…to find a way out!… of course there’s always my way…”
 
Well, in 2009 they found my way out before I did; I got laid-off…and I couldn’t be happier – or more broke.  Since we are in a haunted and “grave” situation, let’s call it revenge from the grave.  You can’t tell me you’ve never thought about doing something else.  How many of you completely liked what you were doing and where you were doing it?  Not me.  We now have the opportunity and all the time in the world not only to find the same line of work if we wish, but to try something astonishingly different and new.
 
Purpose.  Of all those things I was trying to do working, I can now pursue, earnestly, emphasis on earn.
 
During the first six weeks of unemployment, I worked day and night feverishly scanning job boards, websites and networking.  I put it all out there and then some.  Phone calls, emails, informational meetings – you name it.  I did my due diligence.  Turnout?  The sound of crickets chirping in the dense, dank, disdainful and dark, dark night come to mind like the aftermath I was faced with after the 1994 Northridge Earthquake.  Devastation, upheaval and boundless Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.
 
I had nowhere to turn.  My thoughts then summoned me to my past, unfinished dream: voice-over acting.  This would prove to be an extremely expensive, but enormously lucrative return, but I figured why not?  I had the connections already established.  Once again, more emails and phone calls…and waiting…and waiting.  The silence was as deafening as my first return home from college, walking into my room after having been in a dorm environment 24/7 with constant chatter.  And other noises.  Here I stand, in an altogether irreconcilable and perplexing din, motionless.  After further research it was proven that pursuing voice-over acting not only required what I studied years ago, but due to recording and studio costs and, again the advances in technology, an in-home and online setting was required for me to honestly continue on this path.  Financially, logistically and technically impossible.
 
The Big Transition…
 
To Be Continued…
 
TheUnemployMENTOR – email@theunemploymentor.com
Why Just Look For A Job…Create One!

Tagged as: change gears, depression