Freshly pressed
It was a Tuesday, so it was time to go to work. I took a shower and ironed a shirt — it was wrinkled and needed a good press. I packed my laptop, got in the car, and settled into a quiet little coffee shop with Wi-Fi. I got a coffee and a pastry and I got to work.
None of that should strike you as unusual, except for this: I don’t actually have a job.
This is a new thing for me. I’ve been employed since I was 17.
I was let go from a company with which I had worked for more than 10 years. In that decade, I amassed roughly 1 million miles of domestic and international travel. I spent two of those 10 years living in Australia to establish the company’s Asia-Pacific operation.
I was excused from further participation in February, a little more than six months after returning to the United States from Sydney. I received a lot of kind words and a severance package that was somewhere between “acceptable” and “generous.”
At first, I was miffed. I was the same kind of Miffed I get when my Wordle streak is broken or I miss a square on Immaculate Grid. Then I advanced to Taking it Personally, wondering who didn’t have my back when the spreadsheet rows started getting crossed off.
Then came Acceptance. My salary stuck out a little too far to the left on that spreadsheet. I was born in Nineteen Sixty Something. Together, those two addends yielded a simple sum: I was expendable.
I’m now part of a large and growing cohort of people who are too young to retire and too old to be hired. The only thing that sets me apart from the thousands of others like me is how long I managed to avoid this fate. By my count, I survived 27 formal rounds of layoffs at five different employers since 2001. I’m now 27-1 against the Career Grim Reaper.
You could argue that surviving all those layoffs actually worked against me. If I’d been forced into a pivot 15 years ago, maybe I would’ve found another path — maybe even built a new kind of value. Then again, maybe that path would still have led to right here.
You could also argue I’m paying now for a choice I made in 1988 — when I took a full-time job in my field instead of finishing my bachelor’s degree. You could argue that if I had finished, I would’ve graduated into the 1991 recession and would have had to compete with more experienced people for the job I already had.
You could argue all day. I have. It doesn’t change anything.
I was expended into a world full of self-service job-hunting resources. I’m in a world where remote work is now standard in a way it definitely wasn’t back in 2001. (I’ve worked remotely since 2014. To be blunt, I don’t love it — but that’s for another time.) There are plenty of opportunities, and most don’t require relocation.
And yet.
I have a Notion database where I track my job applications. Since March, I’ve applied to 31 roles.
- 21 outright rejections.
- 6 marked “No further response” — just the initial auto-reply, then nothing.
- 4 still pending.
I don’t feel great about any of them.
I don’t just click EasyApply on LinkedIn. I tailor each resume to the job. If a cover letter is even optional, I write one — because I know my resume needs context. On paper, I’m not someone you’re dying to hire. I’ve got deep experience, but I’m older. I’ve held lofty job titles, so I look “overqualified,” whatever that means. I don’t have a degree, so your applicant filter may reject me before you ever do.
“You’ll figure it out,” people tell me. “You always do.”
Here’s what I’ve figured out so far: I may never be an employee again. I’m too young (and too broke) to retire. Too old to start over, even though I’m more than willing. So I may be standing where the map ends. This means the next step is mine to draw.
In less than two weeks, I’ll receive the last payment from that better-than-acceptable-but-short-of-generous severance package. That’s terrifying. For 40 years, I’ve always known how much money I’d have two weeks from now.
I will figure it out, because I always do.
Until then, I’ll iron the wrinkles I can. I’ll try not to worry about the ones I can’t.