Book Excerpt: The Emotional Toll of a Long-Term Job Search

How do you manage the emotional toll of a long-term job search? How do you move past the emotions that naturally occur to bring focus and clarity to what you want to do? Read more about how I discovered how to pivot to my passion and focus less on the search. Read an excerpt from my book “Tales of a Displaced Worker” — available for sale on Amazon and other online retailers.

For years, it felt like life was passing me by. Photo by Tim Hüfner on Unsplash

I am an incredibly sentimental person. I’ve kept cards that people have given me, I put up snapshots of old co-workers on bulletin boards near my desk to remind me of my history. I do my best to recognize work student work anniversaries.

But I am not looking forward to the anniversary of the college closing. In fact, I’d like nothing more than to go about my day as if the anniversary hadn’t occurred.

This specific anniversary will mark the longest I have ever been without a job. And I am not looking forward to making that a primary memory, now or in the future.

Recently, many of my old coworkers marked the occasion of the college announcing its closure last year with a Facebook post. I spent most of the day feeling this weird pit in my stomach until I could name it. I didn’t want to remember that day, then or ever.