(Update: 4/13/2023 – The search is over. Start date pending. Leaving this entry up, though.)

There’s something that I need to confess about these entries, and the time I’ve had to write them. Hopefully, by the time this is posted, circumstances have changed, and I won’t continue scraping by as I have.

As of this writing, I have been unemployed for an uncomfortable amount of time.

While I haven’t been without, the pressure has become more intense. More reasons that I’ve applied to work that I’ve constantly reframed to be temporary, even jobs that my health may be on the line again.

Meanwhile, even temp agencies have been unreliable. One intake appointment after another, leading nowhere outside a statement that they’ll reach out once something in my fields of interest come up.

There have been multiple rewrites of resumes, cover letters. Full interviews with either future rejections or shifty requests for sensitive information. Memory slipping of appointments with my state to improve my conditions, and nearly being chewed out by a county rep for the time lapse in replies.

Even my therapist spoke to me the very things I had said to myself but didn’t completely take to action. That I need whatever can help me get by until that better job comes. I hated myself for some time after our session, but finally accepting that truth coming from the outside was met with pushing forward in a stronger pattern.

I can only go for so long believing that the faults, falsehoods, and F.U’s from employers and more are stepping stones to something greater. That all the missed opportunities are clearing the way for a powerful blessing.

It’s been hard. Too hard to hold on to that feeling most days.

The ones that can handle news like this, ones that aren’t entirely affected by it yet still care for me, are the only ones that know. They’ve helped in every way they can, and I’m forever grateful for it. Others, two primarily, will make my time more uncomfortable than they ever did in older periods of being a dislocated worker.

But this “down time” hasn’t been all bad.

Any time I’ve been on the clock somewhere, the things I’ve written about in here since August 2022 were in the back of my head for years, waiting for expression in any form I chose.

Granted, there is a fictional project that weaves pieces of my trauma into the main character’s life, but even this time has given me reason to write more realistically. Heal the parts that couldn’t wait to be thrown into another story.

Just a way to talk about them plainly, yet artistically, without sounding high-brow, which is far from who I am.

Even with programs like ProWritingAid occasionally badgering me for edits here and there, this time has made me a better writer.

Outside of that, it’s made me a better human.

Wherever my next line of employment is, I hope that it’s a place that reflects the things that I’ve spoken about since this journey began.

If not, I pray that it’s a stepping stone towards that.

While it would be rude of me to think that these entries have been for nothing, each one has been given the time and place to manifest for more than just a chance for self-healing, discovering and refortifying boundaries, and to inspire the same for others.

I look back and see that it’s the beginning of something beyond my imagination. The start of something beyond my times of tears and frustration, all felt in between the blogging and writing the same info for different apps.

Something good will come of finally revealing this tumultuous yet progressive part of my life.

I’m claiming it.

D.F.