So, my quest for professional re-invention stalled at career counseling. I went, I took notes, I did the online interviews, and then I went back home and stuffed it all in a cabinet, literally and metaphorically.

I guess I’m not ready. Maybe in the new year. Either way, I’ve certainly found ways to stay busy. Busy at the house. Busy with holidays, birthdays, and family holidays. Busy helping out at KIP. And increasingly busy with local Sudanese.

I joined the board of the Sudanese Refugee Education Fund (SREF) just over two years ago. By this summer, I was writing most of the graduation ceremony, editing resumes for local Lost Boys, and helping my friend Gabriel get his apartment ready for his wife and daughter. Then Agotich started preschool, and I took on a two-days a week babysitting and carpool gig.

Turns out, that was just a prelude. Because little Aciek (the son of another friend, who turned 3 in October) started preschool at KIP last week, and his dad is struggling to manage all the driving and his work schedule. I can’t help on Tuesdays, when I have Agotich, but I can help on Wednesdays, when I don’t. So starting tomorrow the baby car-seat gets swapped out for a booster on Wednesdays so I can drive Aciek either home or to family friend Nyawut’s house once a week. It’s not so much, really, but it does up my carpool duties to thrice a week.

And that’s the least of it. There’s been a change at the board of SREF, too. At the five year mark, the vast majority of past scholarship winners have graduated with bachelor degrees. Now the struggle is in finding work in their field, a challenge made the more so by cultural barriers and a weak jobs market. These guys don’t have anyone to edit their resumes, coach them in interviewing, or teach them the basics of networking. Many want to go back to school, and sadly are falling victim to recruiting tactics used at private, for-profit schools—the very same schools that famously exploit minority and low-income students, saddling them with huge amounts of debt for degrees that are over-priced at best and virtually worthless at worst.

What the Sudanese need now more than money is mentoring and professional development. They need a good jobs board and library of sample resumes and cover letters. They need to be matched with mentors working in their field. They need no-cost seminars that cover everything from informational interviewing to how to choose a business school.

At November’s SREF board meeting, I pitched this revised and expanded mission to the board. And perhaps because my vision was the fullest and I the most animated, I ended up the President and Chair-elect. Starting in January, I’m in the driver’s seat, ready or not.

It’s the “not” I worry about. My mom reminds me that I’ve got nine years experience in recruitment and budgeting under my belt, and much more than that in writing, speaking, and researching. So perhaps this isn’t quite the huge leap into the unknown that it feels. Then again, were I not at least a little terrified, I would worry that I was insufficiently challenged by or passionate about the cause.

I’ve got a basic (very basic) web design sketched out. I’ve lined up my first seminar speaker. I’m working on building up a bigger network. And I’ve got the backing of a team of passionate and talented people. We can do this. We have to do this.

[An unrelated aside. As I’ve entered the family sphere of several Sudanese refugees in the last few months, I’ve been afforded a fascinating and intimate look at a culture trying to balance tradition with Western modernity. Every conversation with one of the wives imparts me with fascinating tid-bits of information. All of which has left me thinking that, in some regards, I missed my calling. Had I studied anthropology (id est living people) instead of ancient history (id est, dead people), I’d have the raw material for a book. If they aren’t already, someone should be getting this stuff down before a luminal time in Dinka culture is forever lost.]

When I first began career counseling, back in February on my own dime, I was immediately identified by my counselor as a Myers Briggs ENFJ type. That would be E for extroverted (shocking!), N for iNtuitive (more interested in the theoretical and possible than concrete reality); F for feeling (whether I go with my heart or my head when I make decisions; it’s  a close call but I tend to be ruled by the heart); and J for judging (as in I like everything neat and tidy and clear-cut. As in I alphabetize my spices. As in, I think I’ll stop now before I divulge too much.)

At the close of my initial getting-to-know-you session, my counselor told me she was shocked that someone with my type made it to the all but dissertation stage in graduate school. Despite all the books saying ENFJs are supposed to be college professors or members of the clergy, I was swimming upstream against my basic temperament. And heaven knows, by the time I discontinued my studies, I was pondering putting my head in an oven to end it all and had had at least one clinical paranoid episode.

Five months on, at my new counseling center (on the company’s dime), I’ve had a very similar experience. Their system is Brinkmann’s First Look, and there you are typed by color. I, alongside all the artists, poets, visionaries, and philosopher-carpenters out there, am Blue. Blue at home. Blue when I’m happy. Blue when I’m stressed. The only time I’m not blue is when I’m green at work, which basically means I toss in a little select sociability and actionable results—yellow things—to my essential blueness.

How this all can play out is amusing. In June, I took a seminar on interviewing. Two weeks ago, I went to test out my refined skills by sitting for a virtual interview with a computer. The night before, I looked over common questions, prepped my stories, and rehearsed my two-minute replies with Simon’s teeth-brushing timer. (This may be the only time it ever gets used!)

Then, on a hot and muggy Tuesday morning, I sat in front of a web-camera and tried to charm a hypothetical and badly dressed interviewer. And then, in an act that abdicated all pride, I sent my interview to one of the center’s coaches to be critiqued.

“You’re blue, right?” Ralph said to me by way of introduction.

“Sure am! Green at work, but otherwise blue as the sea.”

“Mmm Hmm. Watch.”

And that’s when he very nicely explained to me that 2/3 of each of my responses were right on the mark. I chose good stories, I set them up well, and I went through my sequence of actions very well. In fact, he told me that the first 2/3 of my responses were exemplary and would serve me well.

But then, when it was time for the big finish, I ended every story with some version of “and we worked it out” or “we came to agreement” or “we went on to publish a great book together”.  This, in the career coaching world, is the equivalent of “and they lived happily ever after.”

Every one of my business stories, even the most technical among them, read like a children’s book or folk song. And if the person interviewing me is similarly blue, this might just work out. But if they are not, and especially if they are trained at scoring behavioral interviews, I need to start quantifying stuff and put a little more yellow into my life.

The rule is 3 to 5 numbers per story/response. In any interview, I can give non-quantifiable answers to 20% of my questions, but those had better end up being Aesop’s Fables, examples of how I learned a Very Valuable Lesson on someone else’s dime. For practice, I’ve decided to start quantifying every part of my life.

The next time someone asks me how life as a stay-at-home mom is going, I’m going to respond thusly:

“It’s been great! Let me tell you about the three or four best things about it:  My house is so much cleaner that it would appraise for 10% more and sell on average 3 months faster than it would have 6 months ago. All the home-cooking has reduced our food budget by 40% and helped Matt lose 15 pounds in three months. The website I built for my son’s preschool has brought in 10% of the new students for next year. And despite losing 20% of our income, we are staying in budget month-to-month and have kept our retirement savings unchanged.”

I can do this, of course. It’s just a silly game. I can even admit that my stories sound better this way. But in my heart of hearts, I’m still blue. And all my happy stories will still end with “And they lived happily ever after.”

I wrote the piece below on January 26. That was only three months ago, but it’s still painful to read. Who was/is that overly dramatic, miserable person? Not me! At least, not me right now. My story took a dramatic turn when I got laid off at the end of February, but here’s how it all began:

Last November, I wrote about a certain pachyderm missing from the blog. It didn’t really relate to Simon, except that having him around changed what stressed us and how we dealt with that stress.

These past few months, there has been a second elephant lurking in these parts: my job. Publishing, as many of you may know, is an industry in decline. Certain sectors of technical publishing are in particularly steep decline. And certain topics within these sectors are on life support. My topics number among these. The nice way to say it is “mature”. The reality is, there are some topics folks just don’t want or need to buy books about any more.

Now, to its credit, my employer is doing as much as any and more than most to adapt and change to this hostile climate. They are going digital in a big way, and they are going digital in many different ways.  But alas, if you are going to hop on board the digital train, you still have to have passengers. You still have to have a list in other words, and I don’t so much anymore.

My best-case scenario, so far as I can tell, would be to pull some rabbits out of my hat and buy myself another year, then find more rabbits to pull out of hats the next year. When I close my eyes and envision the future, I see a lot of rabbits. And a lot of scrambling. And limited success. I think, to put it baldly, I have a hit a wall in my career. Or to use another metaphor, I have painted myself into a corner. What’s more, I have never seen anyone be lifted out of this corner; they’ve all left when they get into my situation.

I could, I suppose, wait out the storm. Try to buy a few years to build something new. Or, cynically, I could await a lay-off and hope I get a nice severance package out of it. There are surely those who game systems well that would counsel exactly that. But I lack the intestinal fortitude to take such a path; the stress of failure is plainly getting to me, and I’d feel guilty as anything.

Mentally, I’ve been here before. When I left my graduate program in ’98, I remember acutely how I felt. I felt I no longer liked my job, that I was no longer good at my job, that my job was making me unhappy, and worse, that my job might well be making me sick. And at 28 years of age, I refused to believe there wasn’t something better out there for me. I had 40 working years of my life left and was way too young to settle for something I knew would make me unhappy.

Today, I have about 25 years left. I’m middle aged, for crying out loud. But everything I felt at 28 remains true. My industry is in decline. I am not positioned for advancement or success. I’m miserable. My misery is beginning to affect my health, as there is only so long you can sleep too little and eat too little without paying the price. Of late, I’ve been more tired, more cranky, more anxious, and more forgetful than I can remember being in a long, long time. Well, since 1998 to be exact.

The sad thing is that I’ve felt this way on and off for a long time. Change comes hard to me and rarely arrives unless prompted by crisis. In the past, every time I put a toe in the waters of change, I peered into a foggy horizon, panicked, and returned whence I came.

Not this time, though. I can’t. I have ideas about what my next professional adventure could and should be. I’ve signed up for comprehensive and expensive career counseling to help guide my way. I’m putting out networking feelers. I’m abandoning all pride about rank/status/salary. And I’ve established a time-line for when I hope to leave my current position so I can take some time off, re-assess, and then get to work seeking a new one.

I just want to find something I can do and do well, and I’d like to do some good while I’m at it. I know folks my age change careers all the time. I have to trust that I can be one of them.

Then something funny happened. Simon got sick, further restricting how much time I had to wrap things up, and I got busy. The clock was ticking down, I had a list to transfer, and it was time to pass the baton to my colleagues. So I wrote my active authors and key back-list authors the Sunday before last. Then I wrote my co-workers a farewell note. And this week, with just a couple of days left, I wrote prospective authors and those authors deeper on the  back-list.

As a result, my last seven days have been an extended Sally Field moment. They like me, by George, they really like me. My phone, my poor phone that has rung so pitifully little in the last six months, has been ringing off the hook. My inbox, a sad trickle of its former self, has been overflowing with tidings. I’ve had authors call to make sure I was OK, authors call to find out the real story behind my rather vague letter, authors indignant on my behalf, authors happy for me, and authors offering references and networking referrals.

I’ve had authors write polite letters to my successor and then inflamed, emotional letters to me at my personal email address. Some authors I thought were arrogant jerks have been gracious, kind, and offered help. Some authors have been intrigued by my attitude, admitted their own career uncertainty, have asked for updates on my search. Some have charmingly assumed I am off to the competition and are trying to bolt with me. I’ve also been flooded with well wishes and genuine acts of friendship from many of my coworkers.

I have, in short, connected with more people on a more honest level during my exit than I have in the last eighteen months on the job. Not coincidentally, I have been happier at work than I have for many months. Sometimes it takes third party intervention to realize how stuck you really were and help get you unstuck.

Part of this reminds me very much of my experience leaving my first career, academia. The palpable relief is certainly familiar. But another part is very new. When I left my graduate program, I was not totally honest about it. I ran off to California talking of dissertation research, never did a thing, placed a furtive phone call to end it a year on, and then went into a self-imposed exile.  Twelve years on, I have taken control, said all my goodbyes, and leave with no shame.

It may be too late to go down some paths. My hair might be graying, and my recall might be slowing. But rarely have I felt the advantage of age as profoundly as I have this week. It’s good to be a grown-up.

The first two days were pretty good. Lots of friends and colleagues called or wrote to support me, I had a good conversation with my soon-to-be former boss, and I was feeling almost settled into my new path.

Then Monday rolled around, my colleagues all got back to work, and I logged into an inbox that won’t be mine much longer to do a job that isn’t quite mine any more, either. That is when “OK and settled” turned into “unsettled and kind of yucky”.

For starters, it’s a bit odd trying to figure out what I should do and/or respond to and what I should leave alone and/or forward on to someone else. Do I finish that proposal I was working on? Have that author prospecting call that’s still on my calendar? I’m not sure, and there doesn’t seem to be any rule book around here to tell me.

But the big issue is the personal connection. No one, and I mean NO ONE, wants to interact with me. I get it: Some might feel bad for me; some might not know what to say to me; I might remind some of tough conditions in a company they are still part of; and some might think my departure was inevitable and/or overdue. While I can understand nearly all these responses, the silence is nonetheless discomfiting. I’m used to working amid a multi-sensory assault of email, IM, and phone calls. Yet for two weeks now my inbox has slowed to a trickle, my IM goes un-pinged, and my phone barely rings.

I have the stink of death on me. I think what I am experiencing is, to a much lesser extent, what happens when people become widowed or divorced. You no longer quite fit in with your cohort, and people don’t know what to say to you. I’ve read about this, but never experienced it first-hand.

Thankfully, my time in this space and the degree of my isolation is limited. My family and social life continues as normal, thankfully. I wrapped up my transfer notes this week. (Work itself is also proving to be exceedingly difficult, as I am ill at present and find my motivation sorely lacking.) I hope to officially transfer most of my work by Monday. And later next week, I get to work on burning key files onto a DVD and shipping my computer off to the IT center of no return.

That’s the plan at any rate. And if all goes accordingly, right around the time my jonquils begin to bloom and it’s time to re-mulch my yard, I will be able to put the winter of my professional discontent completely behind me and begin nurturing plans for my next professional incarnation.

I had planned on posting on all of this when the time came that I could go public, which may well have been never. Then fate intervened. Tuesday night, I got a note from my boss requesting a meeting. Wednesday morning, we confirmed the time and she gave me her conference line to dial into. Mark it. I got that email at 10:12 a.m., and I knew immediately that HR would be on the line and that I was being laid off.

And sure enough, at 2:30 I was given notice that March 26 will be my last day working for my soon-to-be-former employer. The financials are good—I still get my bonus, I have a nice severance package, and I have access to free comprehensive career counseling in town. They are being decent and generous at a time many companies are neither.

I’m OK. More than OK even. That will only change if at age 80 I’m crippled and lonely, living in a dirty bed-sit with barred windows and eating cat food because I lost my last chance at employment at 40.  I’m hoping that scenario is unlikely.

So this story is beginning in the middle. In a few weeks or months, whenever I think it’s appropriate, I’ll begin at the beginning. And along the way I’ll be blogging about my great (mis?)adventure of self re-invention at 40.

But don’t worry. The main story line here will continue to be Simon.