New Job After Unemployment: My Three Hardest Months

On 28 September, I started a new job after unemployment with an international company, doing something very similar to what I did before, and I can’t tell you how relieved and happy I am. The past three months were the hardest I have ever been through, and I am more than grateful to this company for giving me a chance.

I’ve worked since I was sixteen, and I have never been unemployed. I always went from one job straight into the next, so this was the first time I’d experienced anything like it, and I sympathise with the unemployed more than ever. It is not easy out there. In July I wrote about sending applications off into what felt like a void, close to fifty roles by then, and I only ever had three interviews. All I could think about was someone giving me a chance, letting me show what I am capable of. I just needed to be given a chance! I was hustling to stretch very little over everything I needed to cover. While I made it happen, the process was the most stressful, exhausting, and devastating part, and the worry and the anxiety sat with me every day, along with the anger and the despair and the helplessness. It was a shock to my system. I kept super busy with the blog and the personal admin and the kids, but it was heavy.

I had help along the way, and I’m extremely grateful for it, but leaning on support was a first for me, and all help comes with limits. The day-to-day has always been something I’ve navigated on my own.

There’s a sense of freedom one feels in those situations, where you feel anything is possible for you now, and you can start a new page the way you see fit. I wrote about that strange kind of freedom before, waiting out the traffic in my car after the school run and then sitting in the library or a coffee shop for hours with nowhere I was supposed to be. But it comes with challenges, because starting my own thing would take time and doesn’t account for bills that have to be paid now. I tried for something more flexible and thought I would rather put my effort into teaching online or building something of my own, even if it was harder and slower, but it came down to time or money, and it didn’t quite work out. With no backup to carry me, money had to come first.

So what does that look like? Well, I am still working remotely, but the hours are not ideal. Because it’s an international company, I’m working late nights, most likely right through December, and soon I’ll move to day shifts when they open an office in South Africa, but those are busy days with no wiggle room and not nearly the flexibility I had in my previous job. But we make do, as we always do.

I’m in training now and will be for at least two months, and it feels good to be doing something again, to be productive and contributing. I’m a fierce learner; it energises me, whatever it is, and I’m a bit of an overachiever, so I always try to do my best. But the learning goes further than the training. The three months taught me what I want and what I don’t want, and they humbled me. They showed me what I need to work on and toward, and how to get there, and I think I took a lot for granted, so I’m more grateful now. It was not all doom and gloom. It’s the best we can do, isn’t it? Learn from our circumstances so we can grow and better ourselves.

I was forcibly walked away from a company I worked for almost a decade, completely empty-handed, with just a sorry. On 30 June I had a job, and on 1 July I didn’t, and I wrote about that in my retrenchment story. I am still angry at what happened, but I won’t allow that situation to have that power over me anymore. I just know now that how much I give of myself will have its limits. I think what happened was meant to happen, and so I begin a new journey on a completely new slate, excited to see what the future holds and how this rolls out.

Still figuring out the money side of starting over?

I didn’t build The Honest Reset from theory; I built it from standing in the Checkers aisle doing maths that had nothing to do with a calculator. It’s a 38-page guide for facing your actual numbers, stripped of guilt and wishful thinking.

Read the full story behind it here: The Guide I Made For The Woman Standing Where I Am

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