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Feature Film | 35:57
After a 37 year-old copywriter is laid off from a large ad-agency in 2008, he starts a blog for other unemployed ad professionals. Once the site launched, he decided to create a promotional video featuring the faces and stories of other laid-off execs.
Ed. Note) We are excited to introduce Lesley Pink, an editor and writer who has worked in marketing, financial journalism, and immigration law. She wishes she could swim for a living, but for now you can find her here in her new “Single White Unemployed Female” column. Enjoy.
My bank account isn’t the only thing taking a hit during my first experience with unemployment. My self-esteem is suffering, too.
Of course, I didn’t get all my self-worth from my job, but I did get something out of it. I had a sense of accomplishment, an office, an assistant, and yes, that paycheck. I was being paid for my work and, along with that, my experience and education.
And then that was taken away and my editing background was deemed insignificant, my Masters degree considered [even more] worthless. Since my experience and education didn’t seem to count for anything and since I could be so easily discarded, didn’t that make me, by extension, worthless and expendable?
I have been struggling with these feelings for a couple months now…
Time for some truth. I believe that most nightmares are caused by events that occurred during our waking hours. Situations such as job loss and long term unemployment create mental wounds, and for many of us, those wounds are manifested in nightmares. Sometimes nightmares are a collage of unresolved items that happened during our waking hours. After I wrote Part 3 of Nightmare….Again, I thought about what event could have caused that type of nightmare.
I did not have to think very hard. In 2007, I went on a business trip to Minneapolis. At that time the company I was working for was in danger of losing a major account. The purpose of that trip was to prevent the loss of that account. Shortly before our visit, there was a major disaster in that city. The Interstate 35W Bridge had collapsed, resulting in several deaths. As fate would have it, the hotel we booked was about six blocks away from that bridge, and the room I occupied had a birds eye view of the damaged bridge. The trip ended up a disaster: we lost the account, and perhaps it planted the seeds that eventually caused the downsizing of the company and my subsequent unemployment. Continue reading for Part III…
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Some employers especially those in the suburbs are set in their ways and unwilling to budge when it comes to salary offered. For older persons, this could be deadly as well as for local economy.
These are the pet peeves of some of my customers who, at one time, had fast-paced, glamor-type jobs in media in the Big City and now that they have found themselves in the suburbs, older and on their own, they find themselves applying for and interviewing with employers not willing to hire them because they want “young kids” for eight dollars an hour. Important professionals like doctors notoriously under employ. They want and need accuracy and good workers to ensure that, but they won’t pay decent salaries by which one serving their business needs can support oneself—like pay the costs of living—a roof over one’s head, a car because you need a car in the ‘burbs—and, oh, God forbid—food!
(Ed.Note) Welcome to our journey into the world of recession blogs! The 405 Club wants to get personal via a handful of questions with our favorite fellow bloggers who are documenting the recession and unemployment firsthand.
Today we have the pleasure of sitting with the man behind Unemployed & Over 50.
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Before we chat about the blog, what will you be having for brunch?
* I’ll just have a burger please.
1. So let’s get to it. When were you laid off and what did you do? Or are you employed/self-employed? If so, what do you do now?
* I am still among the fortunate, the employed.
2. When and why did you start your site?
* The company that I work for as been laying off people on a regular basis for the past few years. I believe that it is only a matter of time before my number is called.
Blogging is a wonderful way to not only communicate but also to research any thing that you are blogging about. Since unemployment is on the horizon for me I thought that I would go ahead and start my blog Unemployed and Over Fifty.
