Who We Are
_
It was early spring and I found myself ankle deep in brown
garden mulch in the middle of our street helping neighbors work in their
gardens.
Only a few weeks had passed from the time I was shot off the back and was no longer a member of the picture editing pack at The Kansas City Star. Every day, my wife and I were flooded with questions – how would we pay for health insurance? How long could we nurse my severance package? Could we live on her salary alone? Would there be another job?
Heck, even as we stood out there helping our neighbors pile truckload and truckload of fresh mulch onto all of our respective gardens, I couldn’t help but wonder where the cash was going to come from to pay for our share of the mulch.
But here’s the thing. We were all in a similar boat and I’m sure our street is not much different than many. There were four or five of us in layoff mode – some longer than others – but each of us feeling our way.
This neighborhood project was born out of our collective plight. One family had access to a truck. One family had a garden store discount. And we all had sweat equity to get each of our yards taken care of.
In an earlier time, we would have each piled a few bags of mulch into our cars on the trip to the hardware store and spent long weekend afternoons doing the chore ourselves. But this year was different.
It wasn’t very long into my layoff that I realized that this recession has a chance to redefine who we all are. While most of us in out employed lives define ourselves by what we do. I’m a photographer. I’m an editor. I’m a writer. And on and on.
But the recession has knocked us all out of that comfort zone. But, you know, it’s OK.
I decided that it’s time to be known by who we are and not what we do for a living.
So reaching out and becoming a part of the neighborhood was an important first step. My layoff news was only hours old when I reached out to a neighbor who I knew had been looking for work for a few months. She helped me navigate the unemployment system and through those ties our neighborhood began to open up.
One of my part-time jobs to pay the bills was to work as an indoor cycling instructor. It always feels good to put “professional cyclist” on your resume and feel like you and Lance Armstrong share the same profession.
Among my class members are people who were either laid off or had just gotten back in the working world. There is one woman who has been battling looking for work for nearly a year. We share a lot of time talking about the strife, frustration and even the notion of redefining ourselves as a result of the layoffs and recession.
One of my goals while looking for work was to seize the opportunity to show our sons that there were positives to be found in the struggle. One of those positives was to spend time with them. My secret goal was that they’d both be able to throw a tight spiral by the time I found work again. More importantly, part of my definition as a person would be as there father and not just an editor.
So there we sat on Opening Day watching the hapless Royals open their rehabbed stadium. It was a guilty pleasure I would have never enjoyed with our boys when I was working fulltime.
It was a good feeling when a job lead call came that afternoon and I was able to tell the person that I was spending Opening Day with my kids. Scary, yes, but a good feeling that I was shifting my personal definition and retooling who I was as a person.
Luckily, I made it back to the fulltime working world in only a few months. I still knock wood every day and hope that the economy continues to recover and my new job remains safe.
With work you quickly get swept up in the vortex that is the working world with its hour-grinding responsibilities and stress-building requirements. It’s easy to slide back into the world of being defined by what you do.
While I really like what I now do for a living, I hope, on a certain level, I’ve learned to appreciate my life as a person first and a worker second.
Only a few weeks had passed from the time I was shot off the back and was no longer a member of the picture editing pack at The Kansas City Star. Every day, my wife and I were flooded with questions – how would we pay for health insurance? How long could we nurse my severance package? Could we live on her salary alone? Would there be another job?
Heck, even as we stood out there helping our neighbors pile truckload and truckload of fresh mulch onto all of our respective gardens, I couldn’t help but wonder where the cash was going to come from to pay for our share of the mulch.
But here’s the thing. We were all in a similar boat and I’m sure our street is not much different than many. There were four or five of us in layoff mode – some longer than others – but each of us feeling our way.
This neighborhood project was born out of our collective plight. One family had access to a truck. One family had a garden store discount. And we all had sweat equity to get each of our yards taken care of.
In an earlier time, we would have each piled a few bags of mulch into our cars on the trip to the hardware store and spent long weekend afternoons doing the chore ourselves. But this year was different.
It wasn’t very long into my layoff that I realized that this recession has a chance to redefine who we all are. While most of us in out employed lives define ourselves by what we do. I’m a photographer. I’m an editor. I’m a writer. And on and on.
But the recession has knocked us all out of that comfort zone. But, you know, it’s OK.
I decided that it’s time to be known by who we are and not what we do for a living.
So reaching out and becoming a part of the neighborhood was an important first step. My layoff news was only hours old when I reached out to a neighbor who I knew had been looking for work for a few months. She helped me navigate the unemployment system and through those ties our neighborhood began to open up.
One of my part-time jobs to pay the bills was to work as an indoor cycling instructor. It always feels good to put “professional cyclist” on your resume and feel like you and Lance Armstrong share the same profession.
Among my class members are people who were either laid off or had just gotten back in the working world. There is one woman who has been battling looking for work for nearly a year. We share a lot of time talking about the strife, frustration and even the notion of redefining ourselves as a result of the layoffs and recession.
One of my goals while looking for work was to seize the opportunity to show our sons that there were positives to be found in the struggle. One of those positives was to spend time with them. My secret goal was that they’d both be able to throw a tight spiral by the time I found work again. More importantly, part of my definition as a person would be as there father and not just an editor.
So there we sat on Opening Day watching the hapless Royals open their rehabbed stadium. It was a guilty pleasure I would have never enjoyed with our boys when I was working fulltime.
It was a good feeling when a job lead call came that afternoon and I was able to tell the person that I was spending Opening Day with my kids. Scary, yes, but a good feeling that I was shifting my personal definition and retooling who I was as a person.
Luckily, I made it back to the fulltime working world in only a few months. I still knock wood every day and hope that the economy continues to recover and my new job remains safe.
With work you quickly get swept up in the vortex that is the working world with its hour-grinding responsibilities and stress-building requirements. It’s easy to slide back into the world of being defined by what you do.
While I really like what I now do for a living, I hope, on a certain level, I’ve learned to appreciate my life as a person first and a worker second.