YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

Friends, with your kind indulgence, I'd like to post, for the next 90 days, something of a journal as I try to get back into white collar employment.

Posting here would be a great help: I know I post a lot in the forum, perhaps too much, but this MIHH forum is something like 75% of my socialization.

Like millions of Americans, I lost my job in late March. Per my "Flu" thread, I spent the time since then being wracked with grief/PTSD (March through May), and spent June getting my physical life (preliminary efforts at flexibility and cardio) improved.

I have two types of white collar experience: general office administration, and web/tech/code. The preliminary plan:

July: Get my job search back up to the level it was the last time I was unemployed and effected a successful job search, in 2013. Getting my job search to 90% of its August 2013 level by the end of this month will be a great success.

(I anticipate this will be 90% of my posts in this thread. Challenges will include: setting up my home office, receiving and reading job search books, getting my resume/coverletter/LinkedIn/portfolio site up to speed. I'll have a flurry of posts through mid-July.)

August: In addition to the traditional job search, I'll be ramping up my code-learning. I also want to know Excel backwards and forwards (specifically pivot tables and VLOOKUP). I may well volunteer for web stuff to build my portfolio site.

Several phone interviews will be a good outcome for August.

September: I should be applying for jobs at an intense rate, and hopefully have substantial interviews and even an offer.

The Larger Picture

Those kick ass unemployment benefits end at the end of this month, and many Americans are going to find themselves in a difficult/desperate financial situation within a very few weeks. While I hope I'm wrong, I can forsee mass hunger and homelessness.

If I do my best and still end up there, I can accept that and will move through it. But if I can come up with a plan in early July, and start effecting it, I can look myself in the mirror, no matter what happens.

The stakes are high, life and death for some Americans, and that is why this thread, this forum, and your encouragement, is so important to me.

Thank you for listening, and giving me a space. I'll have a flurry of posts in the next two weeks, and as my job search settles in they'll become more spaced out.

I am honored to know such a self-actualized man as yourself, Oak.

Never think you post too much in the forum, because we are all invested in your continuing success. The image of a successful man is a self-actualized man starting the actions toward a worthy cause. So you are already a success, you are building on that success, and every and all of your posts allow us the rush of cheering on a successful man.

What measures can you formulate today to ensure good food and enough sleep remain a high priority through the middle of those oncoming challenges?

What activity - that is fun for you, fun for it’s own sake - can you take with you into the midst of any of those outcomes that you're predicting?

1. Reply to our dear Manuel Moe
2. Reply to our good friend Beany Boo
3. This week's report
4. Plan for next week
5. A happy memory: what I did the last time I got hired when unemployed

1. Manuel Moe! Thank you for your kind, thoughtful, and encouraging reply. Thank you also for permitting me to post here. These are very troubled times ahead for unemployed people, and this forum is an enormous help to me. I hope to live up to your kind words!

2. Hi Beany Boo. I am secure in food, housing, and Buspar for the rest of this summer and early fall. Happily my sleep habits are normal again, thanks to physical exertion through Zoom taekwando. Thanks for asking! I am touched you remembered about my sleep troubles. It is so great to have you here.

Fun: I have any number of resources, including free audio and e-books through my public library, numerous print Amish romance novels and non-fiction paperbacks, an embarrassment of riches of tutorials through Lynda.com. I can also go walk in the morning (free), and see the pretty baristas at the local coffee shop.

3. This week's report

I cleaned the room where I keep my computer. This was a bigger deal than it seems!
I spent a few minutes reading my main resource, a great book with a ridiculous title: What Color is Your Parachute?
I spent a few minutes getting back into Excel VLOOKUPs
I ordered a number of used paperbacks, all of the job search variety

4. Plans for next week

[*]Keep my inspiration high through reading books that instruct and inspire about the job search, including my dear "Parachute" (~30 min/day)
[*]Assemble the ergonomic desk I've been meaning to get around to for months (1 hour)
[*]Clean up my web development portfolio site (15 min)
[*]Apply for a web developer job (optional) (1 hour)
[*]Update my resume and coverletter (15 min)
[*]Factory reset my laptop: it is glitchy during Zoom/Slack calls, and I can't abide that (1+ hour)
[*]Apply for several office/administration jobs, if any appropriate are listed (2 hours)
[*]Go to eye doctor for updated prescription, including bifocals, and order glasses (2 hours)

Big picture: after a limited start this week, at the end of next week I hope to have a clean, airy, ergonomic physical space, a stimulated and active mind, a refreshed coverletter, and updated portfolio site. Applying for five jobs would be an upper goal. 1 or 2 would be fine.

5. Happy memories of what I did last time, 2013, I was unemployed

Early 2013: I get a minimum wage, third shift temporary retail reset job. A spirit of genius settled on me, because that March using my meager earnings I got three things that gave me confidence to interview successfully six months later: a cheap Android phone ($150), my teeth cleaned for the first time in years at the local community college ($15), and America's Best glasses ($75; I had been using the same glasses for ten years previously!)

Early summer 2013: Being a good reader of the Parachute book, I learned the 21 ways to find a job (not just applying online!) and started to effect different methods.

As a lark I called a temp agency within a nearby large, rich, prestigious institution. They were friendly enough, and took my resume etc

A few weeks later they got me my first temp interview. The guy (who I later worked with, and we were cool) condescended me, and hired someone else.

Late August 2013, the day my professional life changed: I had an interview with the person who'd turn out to be my first temp supervisor at said institution. She is a really amazing person, and really looked into my soul. She gave me a chance, which I had many opportunities to thank her for later.

2013-2015: I temp, until I was hired full time.

I note very well what I did and what happened for me to get that job offer:

1. I got in front of a person who could hire me
2. The person had motivation to hire me (ie she had a bunch of work that needed done)
3. I demonstrated a certain amount of fire/motivation (ie I was unemployed, and sick of it)
4. The way I presented myself (including proper glasses and clean teeth) did not exclude me from consideration

Everything turned on that. Fate is a weird thing. I hope to work enough, and be smart enough, that with a little luck I can be whole again professionally.

Splat!

Today is the first real day of my job search. I have a modest, achievable weekly plan, that I can easily break into small pieces, with plenty of specific things I can do for self care before, during, and after my daily job search activities.

To start at 10 am today, as planned, all I had to do were things I've effortlessly done for the last month: be showered, eat, take my Buspar, have the AC on, ice water ready, and do my morning stretches: tai chi, stick fighting, and taekwando katas.

In reality I was unshowered, hadn't turned on the AC, no food ready, and I panicked about my overwhelming job search, even though I have a very clear and achievable plan already printed out for that very purpose.

Having a good chuckle at myself, I turned on the AC, showered, and got my ice water. I'm volunteering for a non-profit: Google Analytics to Excel (right in my wheelhouse), but that isn't going to happen today.

Having neglected my usual weekly meal prep yesterday, I now have stuffed cabbage in the slow cooker and ham and bean soup on the stove. I did the dishes so I can portion the steel cut oatmeal, straight from the slow cooker, into tupperware for breakfast tomorrow and going forward.

I say all this for two reasons:

1. Sometimes it helps to make something a story. Now I am like a character in that story, and can rewrite it.

2. In a few weeks, or a month or two, I can chuckle at how far I've come in my job search. A job search is a story arc, and an awkward start is a start indeed.

Inspiring stuff. Wishing you (and myself) Optimal Arousal from being slightly outside of our comfort zone leading to Continual Sustainable Improvement.

Thank you for sharing, Oak. Inspiring was the same word I thought of. I feel a bit more energized just reading your post.

It’s natural to panic in that situation Oak. I have panicked in that situation.

It’s also natural to sometimes experience a profound need for someone else to take care of you, and feel a tremendous surge of feeling when that person is not in place.

Your chores and plan are important but your feelings will make mincemeat of them if you don’t give yourself sufficient reaction periods to just let unscheduled feelings roll out.

That’s not critical by the way. It’s just what I’ve worked on myself.

Oak, I want to make sure you're giving yourself enough credit for the cleaning and cooking you do. They can both be very difficult to start. Your meals sound very loving and healthful. Soup! Cabbage rolls! How home-y and nurturing. You are taking good care of our friend.
Heather

Hello Oak,

I too am following your threads with interest. Please keep posting.
And this insight of yours is great, I'm going to give it a try on myself -

"Sometimes it helps to make something a story. Now I am like a character in that story, and can rewrite it...

Just the thing to keep from getting pulled into the mental rabbit hole...