I’ve never been an incredibly superstitious man.  You may have seen me jump over the 1st and 3rd base foul line on a baseball field for good luck, but never really believed that stepping on a crack would break my mother’s back.  I’ve walked under ladders and crossed the path of many-a black cat, apparently fortunate enough to tell the tale as I’m still alive and healthy.  But as you and I know, when you’re jobless, you start to think differently about things.  You start thinking about every little outside factor that may be keeping you from your next job.  Lucky for me, I’ve just exorcised my newest superstition, which obviously kept me from landing a job.

I lost my job in mid-December during the heart of the recession.  Companies were amidst the worst of their freaking out, not-firing was the new hiring, but I still needed to challenge myself, whether a company was going to challenge me or not.  I decided to buy and read a book of such length I had never attempted to tackle — a book over 700 pages.  Now some of you may be saying, “hey, that’s nothing.  I can read that book in 2 days,” and hey, if that’s the case, kudos to you! Me on the other hand, I like to read but I’ve never been an extremely fast reader nor do I usually give the same book a whole lot of time on consecutive sittings.  I tend to need Newsweek breaks, I surf the ol’ interweb for interesting technologies, and the obvious one… I blog (clearly).  My reading comprehension is good, but speed is not my game compared to the avid reader.  That being said, a 700+ book was to be a challenge for me during my unemployment.

In brief, I chose the novel “The Given Day” by Dennis Lehane on a friend’s recommendation who reads way faster than me.  She had read some of his previous work with positive reviews and I saw “Gone Baby Gone” (great movie) so I figured this could be entertaining for the casual reader.

So here I am reading this big hardcover nice and slow, a chapter or so every few nights before bed until about a couple weeks ago when it hit me…

If I get hired now, I’m really going to wish I had completed the self-challenge of finishing this book.

I love to complete tasks, I do, so this wasn’t going to fly.  But as I continued thinking about this book and it’s lack of completion I began to think…

You know, maybe I’m not getting offers because I haven’t finished the book.  Perhaps I need to finish this book and this self-challenge to allow myself the opportunity to move on to the next challenge. Yeah, that sounds right.

I know, I’m crazy.  Writing it down and rereading it now makes me want to laugh at myself.  Then again, you never know!

Needless to say, I banged out the book in the last 2 weeks and have now completed the challenge I bestowed upon myself, finishing the biggest book I’ve ever picked up on my own accord, “The Given Day” by Dennis Lehane.  If my inbox is empty and my phone doesn’t ring this week, yes, I’ll be disappointed. But looking on the bright side of things, now my head is clear, I’m proud of myself once again and ready to take on a new challenge.

-By Garrett Dale, Founding Member, Music Industry Professional, Digital Marketing Expert and actively seeking employment opportunities.

405 Club Feedback: Have you given yourself any challenges since unemployment? Have any superstitions impacted your job hunt?