In a year and a week, I wrote four books. Books of fiction, you see; not heavy-laden with facts and most assuredly not great literature. Just fiction, plain and simple, as best I could write it — given limitations more of talent than of time — during an extended period of job search often dismally referred to in the trade as unemployment.
In mid-February of 2008, an Ohio-based manufacturer eliminated my professional position (and me as well) from its payroll. Fifty-three weeks later, I had (in addition to searching “full-time” each and every day for a roughly comparable job) completed a full-length novel, a novella, a second full-length novel and a collection of 10 short stories.
With absolutely no reason to assume that anything I had written would be worthy of note, I dutifully sent off, nonetheless, each and every manuscript (or at least parts thereof) to prospective literary agents, pleading for representation, knowing full well that no self-respecting agent would lower his or her standards enough seriously to consider an unsolicited, unreferred manuscript from an unpublished author. Nevertheless, I persisted, and loved every minute of it.
The point? Well, you see, the point would be that there are currently several million of us unemployed, some “better educated” and then some less credentialed than others. Bogged down in the muck and mire of unemployment, it would be easy to lose a sense of balance, of proportion and even in extreme cases to lose a sense of self: a clear self-image of who you are and of what defines you.
And so I wrote, for that year and a week. And so I write. It’s my way of productively filling in time left over after hours each day of serious job search. Those individuals less verbally inclined than I could just as easily find some other way to express who they are, if only to themselves: pottery making; photography; coaching a children’s ball team; mentoring a student — the possibilities are endless.
It is at times like these when we have the opportunity to remember (or sadly enough perhaps to learn for the first time) that we are not defined as persons by what we do for a living. We are instead more defined as persons by what we do with our spare time, whether employed or not.
When someone asks me how I’m doing, I answer brashly: “I’m doin’ a hunnerd, a hunnerd percent, couldn’t possibly be any better.” Too Pollyanish? Not at all, especially if you actually mean it. By saying it often enough, I learned to believe it myself.
Of course, there are more mundane bits of advice I could give related to the job search itself, such as having a rigid schedule each and every day of searching; of setting a fixed quota each day of a specific number of decision-makers to contact; to follow up after each contact; informing everyone you know; and, most importantly, to persist for as long as it takes, keeping in mind that the point is to pursue jobs you would truly like to have once you succeed.
A person, though, can only take so much of that each day. That leaves hours of opportunity for languishing in bleak and/or dismal desperation, or for more productive work — for work aimed at expressing, if only to yourself, who you are or more importantly who you are about to become.
A life without writing now, after that year and a week? Not likely to happen, not for me. Wouldn’t have missed it for anything and I have no intention of laying it casually aside. If someone were to take it away from me, I’d feel like Conrad’s Mr. Kurtz uttering at the end, ”the horror, the horror.” But I simply will not allow that to happen.
I will, possibly later than sooner, find gainful employment, which may or may not have anything to do with who I am. But the one thing I’ve taught myself is that if I keep reminding myself who I am and then remain true to that, I’ll still be “doin’ a hunnerd” long after this dismal recession has become nothing more than a distant memory.
And for any one of the millions similarly stranded, that person should find his or her own way to enjoy life each day in a way that can be cared about. Do that and you’ll also be doin’ a hundred percent, just as I am.
J.P. Cunningham lives in Carrollton.
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