After Labor Day, Without a Job—but With a Little Leftover Anger

It’s hard to go back to work without actually having a job.
This is one of those big back-to-work days. It is really the start of the year, a kind of New Year’s Day, especially in New York, where fall is king and brings with it a fresh season of everything from politics to culture. And so it’s only natural on the morning after Labor Day to wake up and be eager to make progress on the job.Instead, I need to make progress on finding a job. Which the New York Times told me yesterday is not actually going to happen. There was a fine front-page feature on the people who are not even included any longer in the rising unemployment stats: the ones who have given up looking for work. I cannot say—after reading the story and after living for three months looking for a job—that I blame them.
I understand the frustration. And I understand the anger, which comes at me sideways. When I was first dumped by the powers that be, I would find myself waking up in the middle of the night and suddenly feeling a surge of anger. I would think about promises made and not kept, like the time that one of my bosses told me that I would have a job as long as he did. Alas, not true.
One smart woman with career advice for me over the summer told me that this is like the loss of a kind of family. Yes, although my actual family turned out to be far more loyal. No shock there. I guess post-Labor Day is a good time, way past time really, to let go of the anger I feel over being let go from a job I thought I did well. Certainly taking the toxic feelings into job interviews would be a bad idea—and I hope I have been able to avoid that particular mistake.
I tell myself to do a few of those learned-in-yoga-class breaths and keep going. I survived the Recession Summer of ’09, with a little help from my friends (a lot, actually) and if nothing else I can promise that if I ever have a job again, well, I’m going to be a lot more sensitive towards the job-seekers I meet along life’s path.