Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Drop those pangs of regret, focus on now and tomorrow
DEAR CAROLYN: About 14 months ago, I moved across the country with my longterm partner for their career. I left my first job, at the time excited and hopeful about the possibilities for me in our new city.
I was job-searching in an incredibly competitive field. Although I got several interviews and came close to getting a job many times, I ultimately gave myself a year to try to make it in this industry before realizing it was too competitive and ultimately incompatible with the way I saw my life going.
Being unemployed for over a year has killed my confidence and wreaked havoc on me emotionally, and it has been hard on my relationship. In January I started to switch gears and move in a new direction, but now with the coronavirus, I feel like I’m staring down another year of unemployment, and I’m full of self-loathing.
I look back on the year I spent “chasing my dreams” as foolish and a huge waste of time, even though it’s what I wanted at the time. I compare myself to my partner, who is a rock star in their career and directly working to manage the virus. They’re headed to law school in the fall as well (theoretically), so I always see them doing amazing things while I’ve been unemployed and directionless for so long.
How do I forgive myself for my past choices — leaving a job to move to a city with no job secured, devoting a year to breaking into a difficult industry, etc. — especially now that I don’t know when or if I’m ever going to start a real career?
— Mid-20s, No Career DEAR READER: You did nothing wrong.
And you’re doing nothing wrong now, except in succumbing to the pull of shame.
Trying something new is not a good or bad idea based only on the outcome. Some fine ideas tank for any number of reasons. Or, I suspect more aptly in this case, some ideas take longer to work out than we intended. Even some bad ideas produce eventual good results if you learn from them.
There was also no guarantee, by the way, that you’d have stayed just fine in your old job had you opted not to move.
So that’s where I’d start with the de-shaming process: You’re struggling now, yes — but, barring our ability to be present in multiple realities, you have no other present circumstances to compare that with. The past is no longer relevant for purposes of comparison.
Meanwhile, your partner is “doing amazing things,” yes. Your partner also is not relevant for purposes of comparison, any more than the other 7-ish billion people on Earth are because they’re not you.
Your journey is your own.
Plus, as time will eventually tell you much more persuasively than I can, a snapshot of a life — which is really what you’re looking at with your partner, just this one brief moment — is not even close to who a person is or how their life will play out. Your partner is no more a capital-S Success for being a rock star today than you are a capital-F Failure for being unemployed today. You’d probably see this about an unemployed friend, yes? And you’d be right.
So spend some of that love and insight on yourself. This move and career effort were harder than you imagined possible and you will figure it out. You just might need a Plan C to back up your B.
Use that reframing process to shift from regretting the past to mining it for useful information. You didn’t get one of these crazy-scarce jobs, OK, but you got close — a sign you did something right. What was it, do you know? Do you have a mentor? Did you give up too soon, or too completely? Is there a lower rung for entry, or a subspecialty or sister industry you didn’t try?
Alternately, did your one “wasted” year expose this field as a bad fit, saving you several years on the wrong path?
If you’ve done this mining already, then drop the past entirely in favor of now and tomorrow. Crisis makes that simple, if not exactly appealing: You can skip the whole fuzzy part about what you want and cut straight to whatever is still possible.
Then, from these possibilities, build a plan. Such as: (1) How long can you afford to be unemployed? Financially and emotionally. (2) What can you do to buy yourself more time for your “new direction” to bring results? Is anyone hiring, are volunteers needed? (3) Break for exercise and stress-baking, and ask yourself (4) if you were to veer off your intended path entirely, where would you go? Blame the catastrophe and leave yourself room for wild what-ifs and wondering.
Make the room, I should say, by pushing shame out. We are in the closest thing I’ve ever seen to a mass rethinking of priorities and purpose; you just got your invitation early. There’s no dishonor in that.
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