Can-iversary

Be warned, this one's gonna be a bit of a "woe is me" post — because one year ago today, I left my job. Got canned. Sacked. Laid off. Whatever you want to call it. Point is, it's been a whole freaking year, and here I am ... still technically unemployed. I say "technically" because I do earn income here and there through freelancing. Granted, it's an absolute pittance compared to what I used to bring home from my 9-5, but it's something. 

If you'd told me on that day that I'd still be jobless in a year, I'd have laughed. In fact, I distinctly remember thinking, "Gee, I hope I have enough time to get all my closets and cabinets organized before starting a new job." HAHAHAHAHA. Well, Rita from October 2025, not only did you have ample time to get your closets and cabinets organized, they've had time to get unorganized again. (Only now you're not as motivated to clean them.)  

I could have a job, sure. I could go to any of the number of fast food joints around here and get hired by tomorrow, or probably be somebody's secretary or something. If push came to shove, and I'd have to do that for my family to get by, then by all means, I'd do it. Which is why I always feel terrible about complaining. I don't have a job because I haven't gotten any of the jobs I want, not because I can't get a job, period.

But y'all, I've been in my industry in some capacity for over 20 years, and strictly in editorial for the last decade. I've been both a writer and an editor and have done just about every type of writing and editing you can imagine. I know how to optimize for SEO and how to handle e-commerce. I have managed a team, an editorial calendar, and a budget. I bring the benefit of valuable experience, both professional training and years of lessons learned through trial and error. 

Is it bad that I don't just want to "take whatever I can get," or start all over in a totally different field? Am I stupid or delusional to hold out for something I would enjoy doing, something I could actually lend my decades of expertise to instead of starting out on the ground floor somewhere? Or am I basically just Cousin Eddie from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, who's been out of work for seven years because he's "holding out for a management position"?

In seven years he couldn’t find a job? Catherine says he’s been holding out for a management position. https://t.co/4q2t2mNDad

— Christmas Vacation (@VacationQuotes) December 20, 2018

It's not that I'm not applying. I've applied for plenty of jobs that I'd like to have. Literally over 100 of them, no joke, and probably closer to 150 or more now that I think about it. I don't know if it's because I'm 46 years old, or because my résumé is shitty for some reason, or it's just getting automatically passed over by AI filters before an actual person ever sees it, or that I'm located in Ohio and want to work remotely when 99.9% of the companies I'm applying to are located in NYC or LA. 

... Or that, you know, I'm just seriously awful and recruiters take one look at my experience and scoff. Or everybody else is just better than me. At this point, anything is possible.    

All I know for sure is that a lot about this year of unemployment has sucked. I coasted by for the first few months on the naive optimism that something new and exciting might pan out for me — like video content creation, maybe! But I couldn't make that work — at least not in a way that brought in any meaningful income. Everything I've tried has somehow flopped, and for someone who is not a fan of trying new things in the first place, that's a huge blow to the ol' morale.  

So I'm back to doing what I started out doing more than 20 years ago: freelancing. Grabbing jobs where I can find them, every day a new scramble to look for opportunities (and every day a new opportunity to be turned down). But back then, I was also a work-at-home mom of four little kids who needed me endlessly, and the piecemeal nature of freelancing was the only way I could do both. Now my kids barely need me at all — hell, I don't even have to drive them anywhere any more — so the reason that freelancing alone felt like a legitimate option for me back then is gone. These days I'm just doing it because that's all I can get, and now that it's serving as a replacement for my main career, it feels substantially different. Desperate. Like I've been demoted, kicked back to square one after working hard to climb the ranks, like nothing I've done professionally this whole time has even really mattered. It certainly isn't helping me get hired anywhere! 

Ironically, though, I'm finding that the more time I spend away from a 9-5, the less desire I have to be tethered to another one. Maybe I'm just so demoralized by this whole thing that I don't have it in me to keep chasing rejections for much longer. I keep feeling like there's just got to be something better out there — like the solution is just around the next corner. But, like, how many corners do I gotta turn? Sheesh.

Is there an OnlyFans market for middle-aged moms with stretch marks? Asking for a friend.