To be clear…I don’t have a job, I have a career. What’s the difference? When you have a job, you go home at the end of the day and focus on your family and personal life. When you have a career, you never, ever, at any point, get to do that completely. You get emails during weddings, and phone calls during funerals (yep….happened…many times). You are expected to be available 24/7 working at all hours of the night and day making sure the business keeps running. When a disease outbreak that shuts down the entire country happens, you are still working from your car, kitchen, living room, bedroom, even in the shower, and on the toilet whether you have paper or not. You work sick, tired, depressed or happy. If you succeed, the team is the reason, if you fail, you are the reason. You are on planes, in hotels, eating bad food, and struggling to exercise in order to keep your sanity and physical health because it’s either that or you will end up with a coronary within the year.
It is true. I chose this career. I am paid well, get good benefits, and have a lot of perks to be sure. And with all this it can all end in an instant if some CEO determines that laying off 50% of the company will raise the stock price .000000000001 of a percentage point. This is why, the first piece of advise I give ANYONE who has asked the question “what do you recommend I do for my career?” I say, focus on you, and your needs. Make sure you look out for your own personal and professional goals, your health, and your financial future. Because in the end, they will never, no matter how hard you work, no matter how indispensable you think you are, or how loyal they tell you they will be to you, they will never, ever, under ANY circumstance, love you back.
As we come to another financial meltdown that was going to happen, regardless of Covid-19. Just know that many of us will be put out on the street over the next several months. The banks won’t help, and anything the government does will be limited. I can only hope that those of us who went through this in 2007 don’t have to go through it again, and that the folks that called all the unemployed at that time deadbeats, do. Maybe then they will understand that sometimes, just sometimes, financial and health challenges are not the fault of the individual, they just happen.
Rex