I haven’t been fully employed for one year, and it sucks, and I guess I’m just trying to reach out. It feels very lonely in the place I am this morning.
My story is complicated and I need to say, upfront, that I chose to leave a very good, stable job. I did not choose unemployment, however. They are two different things entirely.
For two decades I was a college professor. I had tenure. There is probably no more stable job, and I recognize how lucky I was to have it. Given the vagaries of the academic job market, many of my Ph.D. brethren never secure a tenure track job.
Several years ago I began to recognize how deeply unhappy I was. In becoming a professor perhaps I was trying to live out someone else’s dream rather than my own. It doesn’t really matter for purposes of this diary. What matters is that I needed to change my life, and I eventually did.
It started slowly, with me acquiring yet another graduate degree in hopes that I could stay at my teaching job, teach some new classes and incorporate new material. Other colleagues had done something similar, some even switching to different departments. My evolving interests didn’t really mesh with my old ones, however, and my institution wanted me to stay in the role for which I was hired. I understand this, but it saddened me because I knew I’d either stay and keep teaching something I no longer cared about, or leave academia entirely.
I planned the whole thing fairly meticulously. I gave my institution ample warning of my impending "retirement" (which is a strange word for someone in their 40s) so they’d have time to carry out an adequate national search. I didn’t want to leave them high and dry; I valued my good relationship with my colleagues. They began the search to fill my position immediately, as it easily takes 9 months to do a proper national search in academia. But the timing of my job change was "Teh Suck:" I gave notice 6 months before the bottom dropped out of the economy. (No one ever accused me of being psychic.) By the time the economy tanked, my school was well down the road toward replacing me.
It has been one full year since I last taught. When I left, despite the economy, I had every faith that I’d get a new full-time family supporting job. I started early, looking for jobs well before my last day of teaching. I worked every connection I have, and made many others. Given my skills and education, I was sure it was only a matter of time. I guess it still is. But in the time since then, I’ve spent down every last cent of savings, dipped into my retirement account, borrowed money from my relatives, and taken out a line of credit against my home. I’m a single parent, and we’re living on that plus an underpaying part-time job. And no, I never qualified for unemployment.
I’ve come very close to getting several good jobs. Yesterday, I found out that someone else had been offered a job that I desperately wanted. That’s what inspired this diary. I thought that the waiting was finally over, that the anxiety was almost done. It’s not, and the light is not at the end of the tunnel.
I need to be very clear about something: I know how lucky I am. I used to have a really good job. I left it voluntarily, unlike many millions of folks. If I have to "dip into" my retirement account, at least I have a retirement account to dip into. My child is able to get state health insurance. I have relatives who deeply care about my welfare, so there is some sort of safety net. As someone who was trained as a social scientist, I know the importance of those resources.
What I’m really writing this for, I guess, is to say that I’m out here. There are other people like me, who perhaps don’t warrant much pity given the fact that we voluntarily left our jobs in the worst possible economic climate. But we’re suffering nonetheless. I’ve felt as low in the last 24 hours as I’ve felt in a really long time. Despite the folks who love and support me, I feel as lonely as I’ve ever felt. It took me 7 months to find a part-time job with no benefits, and I’ll cling to that job as long as I can. In a few days, I’ll probably feel an infusion of hope and a new sense of purpose. At least I hope so. But today I am doing something I never wanted to do: question whether it was worth it to search for happiness in my working life.
Thanks for listening.
GreenMtnState