Dealing with unemployment - anyone else?

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

You're 25 years old. If you think you are never going to change, your taste in music, your preferences in attire, your taste in food and entertainment, the type of men you date, what kind of friends you make and keep, well, all I can say is you've got a lot of surprises waiting in store for you. We ALL have "phases" we are going through. It's called LIFE. Growth brings change. If you continue to grow, I guarantee you will change your mind about LOTS of things. Personally I'm looking forward to growing into and out of a whole LOT of phases yet as I progress through life. The ones I've already outgrown are strung behind me like pearls; I'll be making new pearls and leaving them behind my entire life. I hope you do, too, whatever you feel about the pearl you're making right now. Not growing, changing, and learning would be such dreary tedium.

I'm on my fourth or fifth career change. I started out in biology and medical research, then software engineering, retired to homestead for awhile, then medical again, more homesteading, now I'm attending a doctoral program in clinical psych. Lots of pretty pearls, but I outgrew them and moved on.....

....And those of us who are telling you so are not fools blinded by conformism. We're women, many of us revolutionaries in our day, and some of us revolutionaries still, who have twice or three times the experience of the real world as you do, and who are trying to share some of that hard-won knowledge with an up and coming member of the sisterhood.

Wow, what a great and wise post. Zensojourner- you have thoroughly inspired at least one person today- me.
Still working on my fifth or sixth different and challenging life at the moment...adding those pearls until I die...

[Biciclista]

Zensojourner, thanks for posting. The OP might not read it or care, but i was impressed and I am sure others that read this will benefit from the time you put into it.

Your mention of being accused of being a bra burner brought back memories. In my job as a file clerk, other young girls used to come up to me and ask if I had burned bras... I had a slightly different attitude from the rest of them and I guess it showed.

[mtbdarby]

What a fascinating thread this has become!

Zensojourner - that was beautiful. I look forward to my new phases in life as well. Very well worded.

Flybye -another well written and expressed comment.

Ivana - I'm hearing a lot of "can'ts" whether typed or implied of why you can't find a job. Turn those into "cans". Target companies that you want to work for then find the decision makers in those companies and be persistant. I lost my job in August - the most senior person in my department, but they let me go and kept the guys. I sent out all sorts of feelers to everyone I knew and started doing my research on companies I would have liked to work with.

Long story short, I found a company I wanted to work for and I knew I could work from home doing it for the first time in my life. I'm a single parent and I was tired of spending my whole day working and commuting. I, very professionally, kept contacting the owner and my now new boss with reasons of why they couldn't afford NOT to hire me! With my skills and contacts I was able to justify my salary to them, and they didn't even have a position open! Finally, I pulled a little bluff that I had another company interested (but I was prepared if they called the bluff because I would not have been any worse off, and I was working with another company just didn't have the offer). Not only did I get an offer from them, but I work from home and my salary is $10,000 more than my last job. Persistance, done right, pays off.

Be patient, persistant and professional. It will pay off.

And I for one, would have loved to met a few of these TE'ers in their younger days and am grateful for the wisdom they so eagerly share with the rest of us. It's like an extended family of really cool sisters