Unemployed

... but at least I'm writing again!

Photo by Matt Noble on Unsplash

Being unemployed is never fun. I’ve been in this “stage” two times before this current bout, the first was immediately after graduating with my BA in 2009 (I like to blame the 2008 financial crisis) and the second time was in 2012, about a year before I began my MA.

Does this mean I will do my PhD this time around?

No, I attempted one in 2019. Given the current state of academia, that ain’t happening again anytime soon.

…

It’s been about 13 years since I was last unemployed. Twenty-five year old Rafia had just bought her first business suit months before, was regrettably unmarried, and still lived at home with a helicopter father who was not yet bedridden. Thirty-eight year-old Rafia has been married for almost a decade, is childless not by choice, and… still figuring things out.

The circumstances are different, but there are parallels to that time and now: my belief in the “mission” kept me in a situation that was probably unsustainable. I like to believe I am less naive today. After what I went through this year, I may have turned into a cynic. I hope it doesn’t last though.

Even though it’s been over two months since I resigned from my previous job, because it was a job that I loved so much, one which I was celebrated for, and because I was treated so unfairly, I can’t fully let go. I am reminded of what I used to do whenever I walk into a bookstore (“I invited that author!”) or when I drive by a beautiful home with an even more beautiful garden.

I’m not sure if I will ever have closure. I’m still not fully over what happened back in 2012.

…

Maybe one can never truly be “over” painful periods in one’s life. They change you and take you in directions you could not have foreseen. I want to make something good out of what happened, but I am impatient and restless. I am ready to start working again so that I can feel “useful.” I want to contribute to something greater than myself and for what it’s worth, my job has been that vehicle for me. It’s why I entered the nonprofit industry (I could have listened to my dad back in the sixth grade when he told me that by being a doctor I could also help people — I knew why he really wanted me to be a doctor — but there was no way I was going to dissect a fish, a requirement in advanced biology. Also, I didn’t want to be like every other Indian kid who became a doctor because their parents made them.)

As I experience? suffer? endure? enjoy? live through? this current unemployment period, I should see it as a time to come back to the “work” I truly love that is not dependent on donors or bureaucracy (at the moment anyway).

This is the work of writing.

I haven’t been able to write as regularly as I had been this entire year. It’s because of what happened with my previous job. There was too much anger and hurt and I couldn’t figure out a way to transmute those emotions into something beneficial. And then fear gripped me — my words were what landed me in this position. I didn’t trust myself with the keyboard anymore. And then anxiety. And then doubt.

All writers know this feeling: “My writing sucks. What makes me think anyone will read this?”

It’s true and it’s not. My writing does suck to some, but to others, it may be just what they needed (I hope!)

I doubt I will reach thousands or even hundreds of readers with a single post, but that’s okay. I may never have a viral post that lands me an agent. But I write with the hope that at least one person will read what I have written and it will offer them a new perspective, which will then lead to some introspection.

Have I done that with this post? Maybe not. But I do know that I will only get closer to that goal the more I write.

So, I guess that means my self-imposed writing hibernation is finally over?