I am unemployed.
A couple years ago that would have been a hard
thing to admit. This year, not so much. There are too many people with
faces just like mine: eyes wide, sweeping the perimeter, ready to
pounce at the first sign of a good job.
I’ve attended the job
search seminars. Signed up for unemployment benefits. Played music.
Tweaked my résumé. Wrote a new song. Checked careerbuilder. Worked on
the new song again. What if the chorus shifted from C to G? Updated
LinkedIn. It’d sound better in G. Hey! We got the Tour de NeighborsGo
gig! We can debut “Chickenheaded Thing” and “Father Time.” Email the
band. Email the Tour promoter. Send publicity photos, update copy…oh,
wait, look for a job.
This is a terrible and tantalizing
position we Unemployed are in -- vacillating between finding a job
(responsibility) and pursuing true passions (joy!). The obvious answer
is to find a job that involves your passion. That is one of those
sentences the Employed say to the Unemployed that is far easier to say
than actually do.
In an attempt to rise above the hundreds of
applications pouring in to HR offices, I’ve written letters directly to
CEOs I’ve never met. These CEOs were carefully selected based on their
personal love of music. One CEO actually offers free guitar lessons to
every employee in his Fortune 500 company – probably to offset the
soul-numbing day-to-day work they do in a highly controlled engineering
industry. I thought my letter would stand out by its heartfelt,
down-to-earth approach and its forthrightness, backed by several solid
years of communications experience – who could resist?
Apparently, all of them. The lack of any kind of response said loudly, get back in the HR line.
I
think the blessing and the curse of being unemployed is the sweetness
of devoting time to music. It fuels the soul, makes the days burn
brighter, makes life…fun again, like it was when we were kids. It’s as
if a clear voice inside your head is saying, THIS is the way life is
supposed to be lived. The thought of getting back into the yoke of
regular employment causes the heart to slow a bit, the eyes to look
sideways, the shoulders to drop. “Grow up,” says another voice. “You’ve
got bills to pay. Come on now, get going.”
So I’m both joyous
and pragmatic at this current state of unemployment. I know once I am
employed again, creating and playing music will return to being a
furtive thing, caught in the precious evening hours between dinner and
bedtime, or on the weekends between errands.
But for now, as I navigate between pursuing passion and responsibility, music is a joyous thing.
(more)
Most Recent Comments