{"id":32862,"date":"2010-05-07T16:14:41","date_gmt":"2010-05-07T15:14:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.corporate-eye.com\/blog\/?p=32862"},"modified":"2010-05-04T14:15:40","modified_gmt":"2010-05-04T13:15:40","slug":"inside-unemployment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.corporate-eye.com\/main\/inside-unemployment\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside the Unemployment Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"


<\/p>\n

\"Losing<\/a><\/div>\n

I have a friend who has been unemployed for a while now.\u00a0 And I confess\u2014I have not been altogether sympathetic to her situation.\u00a0 For one thing, I\u2019ve been self-employed just about all my life, so the idea of getting unemployment benefits seems like a luxury to me, especially as my friend doesn\u2019t have any dependents, and does have a comfortable financial cushion.<\/p>\n

For another thing, my friend hated her job, so it seems as if this is in some ways a fortunate opportunity.\u00a0 Plus . . . she was one of the last people laid off after successive down-sizing moves in a large, troubled company\u2014so arguably, there\u2019s not much to be ego-wounded about, and it wasn\u2019t any sort of surprise.<\/p>\n

And yet, my friend has been in a deep and deepening depression since the day she got her official notice.\u00a0 I honestly did not understand this until I heard a recent interview with Dominique Browning on CNN\u2019s Reliable Sources<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 Browning, who had been editor-in-chief of House and Garden<\/em> for twelve years, began a steep emotional descent when the magazine was suddenly shut down.\u00a0 In the interview, she describes herself as a \u201czombie\u201d and the experience as a \u201cnightmare.\u201d\u00a0 The fact that Browning was a very successful professional, living far from the edge of economic hardship, made little difference in terms of the way unemployment turned her life upside down.<\/p>\n

Browning walks us through the experience in Slow Love<\/em>, a new memoir that Publishers Weekly<\/em> calls \u201cenchanting, funny, [and] deeply gracious.\u201d\u00a0 For a while, Browning can\u2019t stop baking muffins (she gains fifteen pounds), and as she navigates sleepless nights and panicky days, she confronts her own life in a deep and difficult way.\u00a0 Read a generous excerpt<\/a> in the New York Times<\/em>\u2014and don\u2019t miss the comments, which come from both ends of the sympathy spectrum.<\/p>\n

Needless to say, Browning\u2019s story has a happy ending:\u00a0 She rediscovers herself, moves to a small town, and becomes a blogger.\u00a0\u00a0 (Really.)\u00a0\u00a0 Also needless to say, many if not most folks don\u2019t have the luxury of reinventing themselves quite so completely.\u00a0 But Browning\u2019s story has a lot to share, no matter whether you are coping with vocation disruption yourself, or trying to understand someone else\u2019s challenge.<\/p>\n

Especially valuable:\u00a0 We are reminded by Slow Love<\/em> of the ways we use work to structure our days, define our identities, and (often) distract ourselves from personal problems.\u00a0 It happens that Browning loved her job\u2014but many people, like my friend, find they miss jobs they didn\u2019t like a bit.\u00a0 So (here\u2019s the relevant bit) it’s worth remembering that when the unemployed go out into the world as job-seekers, they are not looking just for a replacement paycheck.\u00a0 They are also looking for a place to to reconstruct a vital aspect of their life that has gone missing.<\/p>\n

No surprise, Browning\u2019s blog is beautiful<\/a>.\u00a0 She also writes a thoughtful column called Personal Nature<\/a> for the Environmental Defense Fund.\u00a0 Both are worth checking out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have a friend who has been unemployed for a while now.\u00a0 And I confess\u2014I have not been altogether sympathetic to her situation.\u00a0 For one thing, I\u2019ve been self-employed just about all my life, so the idea of getting unemployment benefits seems like a luxury to me, especially as my friend doesn\u2019t have any dependents, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":32863,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,25],"tags":[1285,6127],"class_list":{"0":"post-32862","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-best-practices","8":"category-careers","9":"tag-recruiting","10":"tag-unemployment","11":"entry"},"yoast_head":"\nInside the Unemployment Experience - 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