Well, the call I was waiting for
yesterday has not yet been received. The
anxiety has now turned to agony. As I
power through the morning, I replay the interview discussion over and over in
my mind in an effort to remain hopeful that a decision will be made in my
favor. Simultaneously, I am finishing up
some household chores while preparing for a meeting scheduled this afternoon
for some consulting work. Opportunities
are always on the horizon, but have not yet reached the shore.
During the times I find myself doing
multiple tasks, I am reminded of an incident which characterizes some perceptions
of the unemployed. **UDATE** Just received the notification call that
I was waiting for, and I did not
get the job. Move on. I was driving my son and his teammates to
football practice and was pulled over by a police officer. My vehicle tags were expired because I was
unable to afford auto insurance, or the registration renewal. Of course, I was in violation of the law, but
I still had an obligation to get my players to practice every day. I was naturally prepared to accept the
consequences of my choice to continue to operate my vehicle.
When the officer was writing out my
ticket, he asked me where I worked. I
answered that I had been unable to find any work for two years. He dropped his pen and pad, laughed and said,
“Aren’t you tired of staying home?!” Up
to that point, I thought I had developed a resistance to people passing
judgments associated with my unemployment.
Apparently, I was not that evolved.
In truth, at the time I was laughed at
by the police officer, I was diligently looking for work, attending college
full-time, volunteering with several community organizations, actively developing
a network that would improve my chances for employment, delivering newspapers
at 3:30 a.m. every day of the week to make ends meet, and obviously providing
transportation for a carload of young football players every day. In fact, very little of my time was ever spent
at home.
It was disheartening to be unfairly judged. I know he had to issue me a ticket as part of
his function, but making an overt judgment of me for his amusement was outwardly
personal. Soon after this instance, I
realized that I had been incredibly naïve to think that others would think
better of me for trying to be interminably industrious while unemployed.
