On The Road Again

On Monday, Nov. 23, 2009, the good news was that I did not have to get up to go to work.

For the bad news, see above. Three days earlier, I had joined the ranks of the unemployed, but not having to get up the following Monday was the thing that seemed to make it official.

Then our home computer went down and things really got complicated. Take my word for it -- and this one gets an entry in Mitchell's Handbook of Helpful Hints that Go Largely Ignored -- if you're going to need support service from the company that made your computer, you'll probably lose less hair on your head if it's a model that the company still remembers.

Time marches on and advances in technology wave their magic wand of change, for better or worse. Thankfully, I was able to file my claim for unemployment insurance benefits online before our computer crashed, since an electronic filing through the New York State Department of Labor's website is the way to go.

The last time that I became unemployed, Richard Nixon whupped George McGovern in the presidential election and the first arcade version of a video game to be a commercial hit -- Pong -- was released. I'll leave it to others to decide which of those two events did more to affect life along every Main Street in America.

The year was 1972 and coincidentally, the month was November. Each morning I awake, I hope to learn something by day's end. What I learned during that experience was that job openings tend to be few and far between in November, recession or no recession.

I had left one job to accept an offer that would be withdrawn when the person I was due to replace suddenly did an about-face and decided to stay on. In what amounted to some kind of epiphany, I subsequently discovered that I was in a distinct and dubious minority. For some reason, few people in their right mind leave a job two weeks before Christmas.

"You're a young fellow and you'll have no trouble finding work," my almost-employer concluded in November 1972.

As it turned out, I found another job that began early in the New Year. But my age is only one thing that's different this time around. No longer a licensed X-Ray technician, I've spent the past 20 years in the newspaper business, using the printed word instead of an X-Ray tube to make my living.

I said as much during a recent workshop for job-seeking folks over 40, where the attendees were requested to state their last area of employment. Upon hearing the words "newspaper business," the career coach conducting the session recoiled in horror.

I might just as well have described my work experience as "dinosaur rider."

In November 1972, the classified section of newspapers was the place to look for a job. There was no such thing as Internet job search strategies because there was no Internet; tweaking was something you did to somebody's nose, not a resume; and if the word "networking" was mentioned at all, it likely involved a reference to one of three alphabetical groupings: CBS, NBC or ABC.

But time marches on and 37 years later, I'm on a strange new road now, hoping to find the best way to the middle-aged job seeker's land of milk and honey --- seemingly a vastly different journey since Main Street gave way to the information superhighway.