So you’re saying you bounced me into THIS market?

This phase often feels like waiting at a stop with no trains in service.

Part 4 in this series.

I was a late convert to grad school, exiting a freshly minted doctor of writing in the summer of 2010. Yep, that 2010.

Dead center in the throes of the Great Recession, I found a job and lost all the equity my wife and I had built after nine years in houses we had scraped our way into. We also ran up extra debt that would take a decade to pay off.

I think about that period a lot, mostly because we’ve never been able to get back into a house of our own. Two educators with three kids and no family money for a down payment who landed in Southern California, we’ve settled into the reality that we will likely never own again.  

What does this have to do with my current unemployment? Everything.

Once again, we’ve been thrust into a situation where we are existing on one income. Stretched every month. Clinging to hopes a job will materialize soon and limit the damage.

Unfortunately, it’s likely my prospects are even more terrible than in 2010, when I found a proverbial full-time needle in the creative writing haystack. The economy is in deeper trouble than it was then.

And starting a third career in something other than higher ed—already a daunting task—is an even more difficult a project than it otherwise would be.

I maintain hope. I have to. But the echoes of this cycle repeating are a weight I must shed each morning as I get up to tackle another day of looking for work.