Hard to believe my first post about this was back in August! But I did sense what was coming correctly. At the end of October my 2+ years at NAMI came to an end. Very disappointing as I worked hard for them, did some very good work and had a lot of people both within NAMI and with the communities I was working with who supported me in what I was doing and were frustrated that my time with them had come to an end. None of which was acknowledged by the powers that be when all was said and done. But it’s done which I’m thankful for as it had gotten to be a lousy place for me to be in terms of how I was being treated. Which is what my family kept telling me. Along with, “Just leave.” Which I didn’t do.
What do Tiggers do best? Bounce. So here I am bouncing. As I wait for what comes next. What I need to find is Tigger’s self-assurance. And the smile!
I am beginning to do something I haven’t done much so far in my life–writing. It was part of high school and then my first two years of college but then I started engineering and for the next 4 years not so much. However, when I went back to school the last time it became most of what I did for the next 4 years (that and reading and a whole lot of thinking as well).
By far the biggest writing I’ve done thus far in my life was my dissertation which was an enormous amount of work. While I can’t argue what I did was stupendous, it was good enough for me to earn my PhD. And I do think represented my best work possible at that time.
Now these days my writing is mostly of resumes. Lots of them again. Approaching 30 or so? Each a lot of work as I seek to customize each one and the accompanying cover letter for the job I’m for which I’m applying. Each a work of hope and faith that one of them will yield what I am looking for which is a new place to work. The need is to keep in mind that this will happen. Even if the reality is thus far it’s only been “no’s.” Even if the reality is days feel like weeks on this end of the process.
And so the writing continues. Where will it get me? That’s still to be seen.
I learned a new word several years ago from one of my students–“purple squirrel.” It may help explain at least some of the reason between he and I we’d by then unsuccessfully applied for over 350 carefully selected jobs with customized resumes and cover letters, all without success… According to Wikipedia, “‘Purple squirrel’ is a term used by employment recruiters to describe a job candidate with precisely the right education, set of experiences, and range of qualifications that perfectly fits a job’s requirements…. The implication is that over-specification of the requirements makes a perfect candidate as hard to find as a purple squirrel.” During a downturn in the economy or for any field for which there are too many highly qualified candidates, this may reflect just how picky recruiters can be for the person they are looking for to fill a job. It’s not so much of a deal for all of those of us who are viewed as neither purple nor probably in some cases even squirrels.
In a world of leaner organizations a “purple squirrel … could immediately handle all the expansive [and wider] variety of responsibilities of a job description with no training, and would allow businesses to function with [even doing more with] fewer workers,” at least theoretically.
On the other hand, some words of hope as Junge (2012) also argues there are also those who argue “the effort seeking them is often wasted… and that being more open to candidates that don’t have all the skills, or retraining existing employees, are sensible alternatives to an over-long search.” In fact, no less than Elon Musk wrote in 2012 that organizations not look for “purple squirrels.”
So here I am. As someone who is eclectic, more of a utility player, I am need of the someone who is looking for that. Where art thou?!
[For more information see Google recruiter’s Michael B. Junge (2012). Purple Squirrel: Stand Out, Land Interviews, and Master the Modern Job Market.]
So fresh out of having been “devalued” out of your last organization plus the other disheartening things listed in part 2 of this series, then you get to the joyous (NOT!) setting of working to figure out what comes next? This also is not fun as for many of us mere mortals, the world doesn’t just line up at your door to ask you to work for them. So resumes go out (which is fine) but requests for interviews don’t then come back (which is not). Instead, you wait to hear or when you do it’s a “thank you, but no.” None of this is helped by the reality that while you would like an answer to your resume tomorrow, the process used by many organizations may mean it’s up to a month or even more given how slowly their wheels turn on this process. So what feels like an increasingly giant devaluation process continues. Sort of like waves working on a sand castle.
Where “sand castle” is a good word as one shouldn’t say “I’m unemployed,” but instead something like “I’m living with a downturn in employment at present.” Your employment isn’t hopefully your entire life but instead just a part of it. Just as you were part of one sand castle, now you need to be looking for the next one that comes into focus.
But the above is ever so much easier to write than to live!
So you’ve been clearly shown you are not valued and have been told you’re not wanted anymore. What comes next?
It’s not a whole lot of laughs as out the door you go. Having worked hard to take away your sense of value, this also instantly takes away:
- a sense of value (this is ongoing) as you realize you weren’t viewed as useful enough to be kept around anymore.
- what for me is an important network of friends as in coworkers. Friendships don’t necessarily end but most of them fade away, some of them amazingly fast. As in were they ever there? Assurances that we’ll get together don’t actually happen. Most don’t send a message. Most of those who do quickly stop sending them.
- another network of professional contacts as your email account is zapped.
- a place to go to each day with things to do.
- in a society where so much expectation is placed on having someplace to work and so much shame placed on not working, a growing sense of shame as the time between jobs grows longer.
- This feeling grows as sincere efforts to explain how you could be of value to various organizations are met with at best polite indications of how skilled the applicants were who applied to this job.
Matt Stephens, CEO of Heartbeat wrote (2017)*:
“feeling valued requires that someone demonstrates that they have seen worth in you and your contribution and regularly makes you aware of this. It’s something that is built over time… For people to feel truly valued, it must be reflected not just in what other people say, but also in what they do… and probably what they think…. to truly value someone and what they do requires far greater familiarity and understanding over a longer period.”
The above quote provides some good insights on some of the costs of being let go by an organization as there are several:
- unless your getting let go comes as a total surprise, there is often a devaluing process the employee goes through which can be as brutal as an “ambush” meeting where one is told they’re not of much value and if they don’t turn it around in the next __ weeks “something will have to happen.” Of course the decision has already been made, there’s no “turn it around” possibility. It’s matter a formality so the organization can say (even if they didn’t mean) the employee was given the chance to “turn it around.” Some employees may have done something to “deserve” this but many have not. Rather it’s a matter of those in the organization having decided an employee:
- has gotten too old (and thus expensive and/or slow, etc.) or
- the simplistic belief that any communication challenges between the employee and the latest of their managers is the employee’s fault and/or
- in many times a misplaced thought by the manager that if she or he could get someone different in a job things would work better. Just like that. (Oh, but that the world operated so simply as that!)
- the devaluing process can be and too often does turn into something very personal. There seems to be a lot of lousy HR thinking out in the world. While I live and work in a state where it’s possible to work for an organization which can fire and/or lay someone off for “at will,” there are those who feel they still somehow have to validate their action by letting you know how unvalued you are. And do this by becoming anywhere from a little to a lot personal.
So getting let go by an organization is a big devaluing smack in the face. Often because that’s exactly what the organization has done to you.
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MKs (Missionary Kids) are interesting folks. I should know as I am one. Notice the verb there. “I am one.” For reasons, I don’t understand once an MK, always an MK. Not an AMK (“Adult MK”), but MK. Not “was” an MK, but am an MK. I really don’t know why this is? I certainly was an MK for awhile (1966-1976), but let’s face it, that’s been a while ago–like 40+ years–I just turned 61. So why do I still agree with the statement “I am an MK”? I’m not sure. Was something frozen in time back then? Maybe. It was a pretty big and very impactful part of my life. As it’s greatly impacted the life of others who are also MKs.
But am I still really an MK? Nope. I was. Back then. But not now. And in my case my wife and I went overseas ourselves as missionaries for a while (for longer than when I was an MK), raising who were then 3 amazing MKs of our own who are now also adults. And still, I am an MK. What gives?
Let’s go back to the beginning of it all. When I was in 2nd grade, my folks were encouraged to become Lutheran missionaries, teachers at a school for missionary kids in Madagascar, by some of their close friends who were already there doing this. After serious thoughts and prayers, they agreed and so (after a very complicated and slow packing, selling, Visa waiting, etc. process) there we went (I had a brother who was entering 1st grade and then a younger one not old enough yet for school). At some point, my parents’ Commissioning day maybe, my two brothers and I became MKs. And for the next 10 years, that’s what we were. For me, this was from 3rd through 12th grade, including my 8th grade year when we lived in the US on “furlough.” All the way to the end of my Senior year of high school, when my whole family moved back to the US. I was off to college, they to a new life in south Minneapolis.
At the time I came home in 1976 I remember I didn’t want to be an MK any longer. Just another Freshman in College was all I was seeking to be. But it wasn’t as easy as just taking all the MK part of me and packing it away in boxes in a corner somewhere. There were a lot of things to deal with I wasn’t at all aware of at the time. Things I would have benefited from having worked through back then. But that’s not how our missionary organization did things back then.
In those days missionaries were given up to two years of language preparation (for Madagascar French then Malagasy), but then basically dropped back into life in these United States–something not easy for children and their parents. Preparation and maybe reentry for parents, but for kids, not so much. So those of us who were MKs did what we could with what we had and knew, doing our best to work around the rest. Did it work? Sort of. At least for most of us eventually. Was it enough? No. But it’s how it was done back in those days.
Since then a lot more has been learned about MKs and the importance of reentry. I wish we’d had access to it back then.
So here I remain. An MK from way back in the ’60s and ’70s who in some interesting and some complicated, some blessed and some dysfunctional, some deeply knowlegable and some amazingly naive ways still am one today.
By Christmas Eve morning we were a soggy, very tired mess, having discovered that in fact straw mats only slowed down rainfall, letting all of it seep through on anyone silly enough to think they’d keep them dry.
After some breakfast (while we ate food during our stay by the road, I only remember one meal which was of freshly cooked lobster someone brought by. Why they had cooked lobster I don’t know–for us, I suppose–but they were very good and we were very happy.) But after breakfast, someone realized we could fit a small tree into the center of the spare tire for a Christmas tree. This we did, decorating it with the tinfoil inner wrappers of the chocolate bars we must have been eating. And then there arrived my parents and brother, in the same “taxibe” (bush taxi) that had taken them up to Manantenina the previous day. Together with a welded part. This was bolted back onto the pickup and we were off. Except the battery was dead. But that wasn’t anything a bit of a push couldn’t fix and we were off.
What became a bit more complex on the journey back home was each of the 5 “bac” (car size, hand-pulled via a rope) ferries as they generally weren’t on the right side of the river. So if the engine quit before the bac got to our side it meant pushing the pickup up onto the bac. And don’t you suppose on one of them I managed to put my hands through the back window of the pickup and cut my arm. So, when we finally got to town it was another half hour ride out to the hospital where I got my arm stitched up. And then, finally, we were on our way home, on a Christmas Eve not to be forgotten. And I haven’t.
One of the most unforgettable Christmas Eve’s I had was back in 1974. We were living in Madagascar and had driven north to Manantenina to see some friends at the end of 100 km of a not very nice road. Fortunately, it was in reasonably good shape (as in passable), so we got up to see them without a problem. That visit is worthy of its own post so maybe someday.
However, on our drive back south to get home for Christmas, we were about an hour out of Manantenina when there was a loud noise and the pickup suddenly didn’t want to move anymore. As it turned out, part of the chassis had broken and would need removal and to be brought back to Manantenina for welding before the truck would move. So my dad and mom, my youngest brother who wasn’t so very old and the broken part all hitched a ride back to the town while the rest of us “camped” out by the side of the road. “Camped” as we actually had no camping equipment with us. So the first evening, having had some supper, there were several of us who decided it was a lovely night to sleep outside. And it was. Stars so close you could almost touch them. Enough of a breeze to keep mosquitoes away. We laid in a row on a “tsihy” (straw mat) and talked, laughing at what we were doing.
And then some of the starts started to suddenly disappear. We didn’t notice it at first, but then it became obvious the clouds were rolling in. We bravely said “But there’s no thunder and lightening” which was true but as it turned out there was rain. So we crawled under the straw mat, hoping it would be a brief, light shower. You could heard the drops hitting the mat and then, before too long, the laughter of Dennis Wilson, one of God’s saints I’ve been blessed to know. He was laughing because, having a stomach which stuck out further than any of the rest of us, his was getting wet. And before too long, we were all getting wet. And so spent a soggy night by the side of the road. It was the day before Christmas Eve.
I grew up in a very interesting part of the world known as Anosy, the “land of islands.” This in reference to a series of islands located in this area, which sits at the southeast corner of Madagascar. It’s interesting at several levels. The first is the 1,000+ years of Malagasy history which exists for this area (per archeological digs to date). And in addition, <vazaha> have been there, far too often creating mischief or worse, for 500+ years of this history. This because Anosy has several natural harbors which were used by Europeans on their way to the East Indies. However, its discovery by Europeans had some twists and turns to it.
The First Portuguese Armada to the East Indies had ended badly, with only half of its ships making it back to Portugal. A Second Armada was immediately organized, this one with 14 ships. Heading west to go around unfavorable winds south of Portugal, they discovered Brazil. But then, having crossed the Atlantic, in going around the Cape of Good Hope, the Armada was faced with a fierce storm which sunk 4 of the ships, including the one captained by Admiral Bartolmu de Dias, who not so many years earlier had been the first European to sail around this very cape (which he aptly, and sadly given what happened, named “Cape of Storms”).
Another of the ships, captained by Admiral Dias’ brother, Diogo, was blown far off course and away from the rest of the armada, west and mostly like quite a bit south. In sailing back north to continue what he and his brother were to do, which was explore the coast of what is now known as Mozambique, on August 10 he came across what was in fact a new land mass, that of Madagascar–something he didn’t realize until he sailed north along a coast which clearly wasn’t Mozambique. Realizing this he named it Ilha de São Lourenço (“Saint-Laurent” in French) in honor of the Feast of São Lourenço held on that day. Reporting this when he returned to Portugal, it was determined this was the island of Madagascar, originally identified by Marco Polo.
He and his men landed somewhere in the Anosy area. It’s quite possible they anchored in what became known as the Baie des Gallions, a sheltered cove next to the little Malagasy village of Italy (eetalee), west of the town which became Fort Dauphin (see “Mosambique. Anse aux Galions ou Ranofoutchi” (Ranofotsy) on Flacourt’s map of the area from the mid-1600s). And thus began an uneasy relationship between the Malagasy living in Anosy (Antanosy) and <vazaha> which continues to this day.
[in below map by Flacourt, note “Mosambique. Ance aux Galions ou Ranoufoutchi” (Ranofotsy) in lower left corner, “Fort Daulphin ou Taulangharan” in the upper right]
tomberkas 