#Excellent read...What I have learned from #long #term #unemployment As I stare at the blank page thinking how to summarise my experience from being unemployed for a long time, I realise that this is something I have not even talked about openly with most of my friends. But somehow posting about it feels right because I imagine that it may be someone out there who have sadly just lost his job and may be feeling scared or even desperate about the prospect of what if I cant find another job?. I am hoping to reach those persons and share what lies ahead and how I have dealt with it so far, but by all means I do not pretend to have any secret recipe for getting back to work. I am still working on it myself! As an introduction, I will start by counting how long it has been since I started looking for a job. Exactly two years, three months and twenty eight days. That roughly translates to 849 days. Some days have felt very long, some have gone in the blink of an eye. Some are mildly clear in my memory but for the most part they tend to blur with one another. Before starting my journey into unemployment I was studying the whole day. That part of my life felt like a constant struggle to catch up with my classmates, almost all of them about a decade younger than me. They were energetic, cool, fashionable, good looking and smart. Many of them truly brilliant. And I was old, a foreigner in their land, could barely understand regular English and even less of the many cultural references they quickly talked about. It is easy to imagine how miserable I felt during my first year there, but amazingly I survived and adapted to my new home; not only adapted, I loved it, felt at home and full of hope for the future. All of a sudden, on my last semester in Australia dark clouds began to overcast my overworked yet happy life. An unexpected stall on my fathers business become progressively permanent and by the end of the year I found myself forced to get on an airplane and return to Chile. At the beginning I felt devastated, especially because I had only one year left to graduate as a Veterinarian. But I managed to arrange permission from the University to interrupt my studies for a year, so hopefully everything would work out just fine by the end of the year. I got myself immediately to the task of finding a job. I was not really prepared for it so I started by crafting again my long forgotten CV (Resume) into something more up to date and attractive. Some friends mentioned an unknow professional social network that was the place to be for a job seeker, so I signed in for LinkedIn and spent hours building my profile both in English and Spanish. I began applying for jobs I felt were a perfect fit. Surely being bilingual would give me an undisputed competitive advantage! Not to mention having studied in a university ranked Nº45 in the world should be loved by any employer in a developing country like Chile. But nothing happened, I did not get called for interviews. So I fine-tuned again and again my CV, read every article on the internet about job seeking strategies and doubled my effort finding new job ads. I remember one day having read close to 1,000 ads. Yet again, nothing happened. But I am diverting from the purpose of this article, sorry about that. I promised to write about what I have learned from this situation, so here are the lessons I can share: I reduced my expenditure to almost zero early on: While reckoning that I was a competitive candidate for the jobs I was applying for, the reality is that there was no guarantee on how long I would be unemployed, so I got rid of any superfluous expenses (yes, that includes the phone bill and going out for dinner). Nowadays I must have a really compelling reason to even get out of home; if something is not online and/or free, I just pass on it. I should have not renegotiated my debts: As months went by one after another debts became a serious worry. I had got indebted to buy my airplane ticket back to Chile and now I was not able to pay the loan installments. Collectors began making phone calls and I felt obliged to renegotiate my debts so I could win some time while still looking for a job. It turned out to be a regrettable decision in the end as the terms were not favourable and my debt grew an astonishing 41%! I kept myself busy: This has being paramount to keep my sanity! While having plenty of spare time may seem incredibly attractive for anyone leading a busy life, the truth is that being unoccupied when unemployed can only lead to thinking about everything that cannot be done because of money. Which is pretty much everything in this world. That invariably leads to despair and may end up as clinical depression, something I am not willing to suffer on top of unemployment. I learned new skills: To keep myself busy and maybe enhance my chances to get a job in other fields I began looking on the Internet for free knowledge. Fortunately, early on I read about some relatively new concept in education: the MOOCS. This acronym stands for Massive Open Online Courses and it has been a blessing for me! The best courses from top universities available for anyone, no questions asked and completely free! The first and greatest one I found was Coursera and so far I have enrolled in over 15 courses. Other platforms I have tried are edX, Open2Study, Codecademy and Udacity. Thanks to these wonderful sites now I consider myself a budding computer programmer, having learned so far Python, Javascript, PHP and some Ruby. Also learned web design and coding on HTML and CSS. But that is not even close to the vast amount of courses available there! I have also enrolled in courses about marine megafauna, ocean science, epigenetics, programmed cell death, music, indigenous studies, animal behaviour and even Einsteins special theory of relativity. I have bonded even more strongly with my family: As not only me but my whole family has being out of the workforce for several years, we have gathered together to face the situation. At the beginning, when collectors started making phone calls and pressuring us to pay or renegotiate our debts, we had a rough time and argued among ourselves frequently at the slightest provocation; we were feeling desperate. But on time we came to realise how nonsensical it was because, if we are ever to get out of this problem is going to be united as a family. And we may as well have a good time until then. I have lost many friends but gained a few new ones: Not long ago I read a meme stating that Wealth attracts friends, but poverty weeds them out and it is absolutely accurate. Even friends from 20 years ago did not pass the test, but I am not sorry anymore because at the same time other friends have stood by my side as much as they can and people I barely knew before have become my strongest supporters. I have found the path I want to follow: Once I was able to put aside my worries about the pressing needs I was able to spend time thinking about the future and realise what I want to do in 5 and 10 years from now, where do I want to head with my career and personal life. I know Life will bring unexpected changes in the future again so I will keep an open mind but at least I have a goal to pursue. That has been my story and if there is one single concept anyone reading this may take way from it is that I am still here! So if you have lost your job recently and are starting to feel despaired, please take a deep breath and think on that last sentence. Your debts will take care of themselves eventually, even if you face seizure of your properties. Though my advice would be for you to sell them yourself early on so to carry a lighter luggage. But in the end, you will be fine as long as you keep your family, real friends, your goals and your peace of mind. What has been your experience? If you feel like sharing it on the comments, please do. Cheers.
Posted on: Wed, 13 Aug 2014 16:21:50 +0000
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