Last summer, I was laid off from my job. It was only tangentially in my field, and I was horribly over-qualified. I have a PhD and some of my colleagues had barely finished high school. My degrees are in the liberal arts, and I had always dreamt of an academic career. However, academic jobs have not been forthcoming, competition is at an all-time high, and educational institutions are cutting funding for the liberal arts. I have been a finalist for a few positions but never actually held so much as an adjunct position. I spent the last seven years unhappily in the corporate world.
Since getting laid off, I have actually worked harder than ever on my own projects. The musical organization I helped to found is flourishing, I'm writing a lot of music, and I'm working on a lot of really interesting projects. I've received some measure of recognition for my work, having been awarded a few small grants and being shortlisted for a few others. I've been treating my unemployment check as a de facto artist's grant, giving me a chance to pursue my creative goals in a way that I was unable to do when I had a day job.
The problem is that my unemployment will be running out soon, and none of my projects are paying the bills. I had dreams of starting my own business, and I've been doing a lot of research on that front, but I don't have the necessary startup capital and I've been told that my chances of getting a loan are not good.
Meanwhile, I'm terrified that I will have to take the first stupid job that presents itself. I don't really have too many marketable skills. I've done IT, but my skills in that area are out of date, I don't have an IT or CS degree, and I didn't like the work in any case. My customer service skills are not very good: when I've had to exercise them in the past, some customers really liked me and worked well with me, but simply couldn't work with others. I've struggled with organization when I've had office jobs, and I'm not even very good at data entry because my mind wanders and I end up making a lot of stupid mistakes. I actually usually get along alright with coworkers, but managers find me frustrating and erratic. I tend to question authority and I'm not good at taking direction from people if I don't respect their intelligence, and I find myself breaking rules (often without realizing it) if they seem too arbitrary or if I don't understand them.
I don't know what to do. I'm sure I can find a meaningless job doing whatever, but at this stage in my life, I want a satisfying career, not a dead-end job. Not only that, but many employers are afraid to hire someone with my academic credentials. My special interests are intense and varied, but they are no help: I'm into historical linguistics, avant-garde music, vinyl records, philosophy, European poetry, and microbrew beer. Despite showing some early promise in that direction, I did poorly in math and science in high school, and anything too quantitative is probably out. I really just want to have the freedom to do the things at which I excel, and make a living doing it. What upsets me the most is that I may have to do something that I not only do not like, but that I can't even be good at. Given the chance, I would gladly work 60-80 hours per week, if it were something that I cared about.
26 Apr 2013, 1:20 pm
