Thirteen Months, Twenty-Seven Days

As some followers of this blogspot may be aware, I was unemployed for some time recently - a situation I was becoming increasingly distressed about, to the point where I found it difficult to focus on much more than the black abyss of my own joblessness. The good news is that I started working at a local television station last week. It's a job that I really, really wanted and that I'm extremely grateful to have gotten.

But along with my great enthusiasm for being back at work is a sobering sense of reflection on my too-long tenure on unemployment. I worked for National Amusements as a theater manager for ten years and when they sold the majority of their assets to a rival chain, I expected some new policies and procedures would need to be implemented. As it turned out, there was but I wouldn't be staying to implement them.

Deciding to give my notice rather than accept the new owner's job offer was a difficult decision and I spent most of the time in the title of this post wondering whether or not I had chosen wisely. On the one hand, to stay would not have been beneficial to me or my family. In fact, it would have been almost a sure guarantee to ruin.

But, as I often thought as I sent out one resume after another to no avail, at least it would have been a job. A job I could no longer make a living off of or receive benefits from, true, but at least it was a paycheck - something to work with. I frequently agonized as to whether I had tragically erred in making a young man's decision to leave to look for something better rather than make a decision more suited to my age and play the safer hand.

When I first left, I felt confident that I would find new work in a relatively short amount of time and I held on to that optimism for the first six months or so. Even though nothing was panning out, I didn't doubt that a break would come. But by the beginning of this year I really begin to worry about whether I would ever be able to break back into the working world.

They say that many people on long term unemployment get to a point where they just give up and I can definitely sympathize with that. News reports about how many companies refuse to hire people who aren't already working and about how the longer a person is unemployed, the more unemployable they become sure don't help.

At the top of this post is a picture of my old desk area at Enfield Cinemas, wallpapered with drawings from my son Owen. I look at that pic now and it seems like it came from another lifetime. I had no idea when I took that shot on my last day of work in April of 2010 what kind of journey I had ahead of me. Now that I'm working again, some might say that I just wasn't meant to get any of those other jobs and that, in the end, things worked out for the best.

I agree on that - but being unemployed in today's America was a long and humbling experience that I'll never forget.

Looking For Work

As regular readers may have noticed, things have been slack around here lately. I tried to compose a Drive Angry review over the weekend but it just didn't happen. I didn't care for the movie but I couldn't get motivated to explain why. That means it's been well over a week since my last post and while I'd love to tell you that things will get back on track here soon, I'm not sure they will.

The problem is that I've been unemployed for some time now and the longer it goes on (we're on about the ten month mark now), the more dire my personal situation is becoming. When I first left my previous job due to the company undergoing a change in ownership, I felt good about my chances of finding work.

At this point, though, it's hard to stay upbeat. Recently my hopes shot up thanks to two interviews back to back but neither one yielded an offer and the strain of waiting for another chance at bat - and worrying that each succeeding prospect will similarly fail to pan out - is pushing everything else out of my thoughts.

Since this all began I've been optimistically telling myself that things will work out but being forced to contemplate the very real possibility that they might not - or at least not soon enough to avert financial disaster - is making it hard to give the same thought I normally would towards espousing the merits of Dr. Giggles. Movies and blogging have always been a reliable refuge for me but the grimness of the real world is occupying too much of my thoughts right now.

So, if posts are sparse around here - that's why. I just hope that the next time I say I don't have a lot of time to devote to blogging, it'll be because I'm swamped at work.