On job searching.

Ever have a friend on, like, Facebook, who you just suspect has probably left their spouse, but they don’t say?

That’s something that doesn’t happen here, but it does in places like that.

You know.  You see the “inspirational quotes” talking about “rebuilding yourself” and doing things “alone” and strange quotes about how “love” should be….so you’re perusing the timeline to see what  you’ve missed (because of Facebook’s quirky algorithms, maybe you missed “THE post where she says she’s left her spouse) but you don’t find it.  So you’re left to draw your own conclusions.

To be fair, I’ve done shit like that too a few times.  It’s kind of a Vaguebook type thing I guess.  It’s just funny because….wouldn’t that be tough to do here? I guess you could.  Someone could write just random vague entries alluding to “SOMETHING” and then blammo, you find out she’s pregnant or getting divorced or who the fuck knows what.

So.

What was I saying.

Unemployment.  (There’s a segue.)

My husband is unemployed for the first time since I have known him.  He was laid off almost two months ago.

Part of me wants to rant in a way I haven’t been able to elsewhere.  If I ranted, I would say that he has struggled in his career his whole professional life. I would say that he didn’t make himself indispensable; he was expendable so he was “laid off”.  I would blame him for the turmoil our family is in, and I would say that I wouldn’t be entirely wrong in doing so.  Of course, not all of this is his fault and does fault really matter?  (It always has to me, though.)  He’s unemployed and all I know is that I never want to go through this nightmare again.  It is a roller coaster of epic proportions; or maybe I should say that the process of finding a job is “epic”, the way the kids say.  But I won’t type out the rant. I won’t say how angry I am at him, or how much I believe this to be his fault, or how stupidly he played his career at a fucking Global Fortune 500 country. I won’t say any of that, because it wouldn’t be productive.

Either way, it fucking blows.  One week will look nothing like the next.  One week ago, X jobs were in play.  Then those fall away, and more potential jobs show up, and more go belly up.  One minute, he may be working across the country; the next, he may not get a job at all.  It’s literally that bad.  I’m sick of it, and sick because of it.   I hate it.  I am not designed to weather uncertainty, and that’s literally all this is.  One big boatload of motherfucking uncertainty.

And forget trying to read the tea leaves.  Forget it.  A job that sounds perfect on paper won’t materialize, while another might be a possibility but our family would need to move away – and should we do that to four children? – and then forget that, but there’s a smaller company that might have this job or that; oh never mind, they’re not interested, but what about THIS one?  FUCK THIS NOISE.  In the ear.  Hard.  With very sharp pencils that can poke through ear drums.  Not that I’m angry or anything – is that the impression?

Like I said, I am not built for this shit.  I am built for many things, but this isn’t one of them.

And forget trying to extract meaning.  I search for meaning in everything.  I do not always believe things happen for a reason, but I believe there can be a reason in everything.  So what’s the REASON?  What will happen here that later we will look back on and say, “Ah, I SEE….because this happened, that happened and now I see the purpose in what originally went wrong.”  Am I supposed to improve my skills in uncertainty management?  Yeah, no.  Sorry, but that won’t happen.  Is this supposed to lead us to (another area of the country, another industry, a better job)?  Fucking forget it, I can’t tell you anymore.  I thought maybe I could, but I can’t.  And it blows.  Not knowing how you are going to pay your bills, and going through rounds and rounds of interviews and “maybe this, maybe that” – fuck ALL of that.

You know how you take those personality tests, and they will ask questions like: “Would you rather spend a week planning your vacation, or would you rather let the vacation ‘unfold’ and go with the flow?”  I always answer in the former.  I know now that I have always been right about myself.  I am not built for uncertainty.  But in unemployment, that’s exactly what you’re dealt.