The Overwhelming Paralysis of Failure
I’m guess I’m just jumping right into it.
How do you define yourself without a source of income? How do you handle the unending waves of anxiety that washes over you as you see the financial plans you’ve made for yourself crumble before your very eyes? As you envision your retirement years with barely enough to survive on.
In 2020, I thought I had hit the jackpot. I had landed a “good job” with the most salary i’ve earned as a black woman. On my first day i realised I may have made a mistake. However I persevered for 18 months (successfully if i may add) until I couldn’t take it anymore. I was only able to carry on that long because my team were simply the best people anyone could ask for. However, a change in line management changed all that for me. The decision to quit last December, wasn’t an easy one, but the financial and emotional support from my husband allowed me to exercise the privilege of leaving a job before lining up the next one. I’d hoped to land a job, any job, within 3 months. Boy was I wrong.
No one anticipated the carnage that would be 2024 job market. Maybe they did. I certainly didn’t.
Apart from getting another job, I have always thought of paths ways into the Gig or Creator economy that social media platforms have made available to us i.e., YouTube, social media influencing, selling products using Shopify. The idea was to identify something I’d love to do and start off as a side hustle and then with any luck go into it full time once I started generating steady income close to what my job pays me. You hear these sort of success stories over and over again and you wonder what sort of stuff those people are made off, because they seem to have hacked the code. While you can barely get past the imaginary wall before you.
Years ago, I was a budding blogger, and kept up with other favourite bloggers as well. I soon started realising that people started sharing more and more of themselves online. I knew I wasn’t cut out for that, which essentially brough an end to what would have been my path to dominating the Creator economy, at a time when the market wasn’t saturated with players.
The feeling of failure produces a variety of uncomfortable emotions like embarrassment, anxiety, anger, sadness, shame and the very odd need to vomit. I now have more empathy towards those who will literally do anything to escape those feelings. As I’ve often wondered where to purchase a sachet of weed or other class A, B, C drugs. It’s not something my local Sainsburys have on their shelves. That’s a joke by the way. I’ve been told I have a German sense of humour.
Thankfully, I think I am at the peak of these uncomfortable emotions and hopefully it gets better from here, even if I don’t land a job anytime soon. It is immensely cathartic writing this experiences down for public to read, who would have “thunk” it. Over and over, I am learning to keep pushing past the “imaginary wall” doing my best and leaving it at that. At an appointed time it will all come together and make sense.
If like me, you’ve been at the receiving end of the 2024 job market, stay strong. I’m rooting for you, for all of us.