I have been quiet for a while

Being unemployed is a journey with mentally ups and downs. For me it is a positive and a forward-looking process to go Walkabout. But even the best course of events runs into trouble and gets defeated for a while.

My derailment happened about 3 weeks ago when my wife got sacked a Wednesday at 8 o'clock in the morning. She got a short "warning" on a text message and shortly after a cap driver knocked on our front door delivering the walking papers - and her mobile and email was closed minutes after. I have never seen a person collapse so quickly - and the following hours and days were a veritable nightmare in a state of shock. Many thoughts crossed my mind during those minutes and I still goes through the events of that day in my mind: What will happen now? Will we be able to come through this? Is this a final collapse and will everything fall apart?

But of course life continues and I'm not telling you this because you shall feel sorry but because I want to give you a picture of feelings and reactions during and following a sacking. To be sacked is like a bolt from the blue and the emotional pattern is hard to describe but is often compared to what happens emotionally when we are exposed to attacks, accidents, death or severe illness. The parallelism in how we feel it brings conscious and unconscious memories to our mind and reminds us of former episodes. So it is a mess of feelings of great complexity: Loss of identity, being discarded, unfairness, hopelessness, insufficiency, being up against a superior force, economic and existential uncertainty to mention some. Being part of situations like this reminds us of our own experiences and emotional feelings from our past comes to our minds and we react and gets involved.

So the walkabout is under attack - or is it? This sequence of unpleasant events reminds me of the importance of keep going with my Walkabout - both physically and mentally - using it to bring myself and us and our needs in focus. Sometimes chaos leads to creativity and new insight.

Into the Wild!

It is hard not to be absolutely fascinated by the story about young Christopher Johnson McCardless who in 1992 gave up everything and walked  into the wilderness to be found dead four months later in Alaska by some moose hunters. McCardless gave up his privileged life and comfort in search of adventure. Many people have been affected by McCardless's life and dead. Some characterizes him as naive, a reckless idiot, an arrogant narcissist and others admires him for his courage and noble ideals.

I'm not the one to judge about McCardless and his Walkabout but there are indeed parallels to my own Walkabout. Being out there in the jobless wilderness anxious for the content of the future, what is actually my own (job) identity? And what about the following line:"I read somewhere how important it is in life not necessary to be strong but to feel strong....to matter yourself at least once, to find yourself at least once in the most anxious of human conditions". Being sacked is for me and by many others characterized as an identity crisis – from one day to the next you are nothing in a job oriented western world. The text line brings for me thoughtfulness and possibilities into this chaos – there is here an opportunity to use this “room of nothing” as fuel for reflection on how to move on towards a new job identity – not necessary easy but a chance worth trying!

Judge for yourself - find the book here and the movie here - but start taking a look at the music video by Eddie Vedder and listen to the song lines.

How am I doing this?

Not much time is left in a busy daily round for reflection on what to do in the future. I will take the chance and let reflection and interests set the direction for a while and see what happens. Coincidences has a great influence on our life and my Walkabout is an attempt to push myself into a more chaotic and unpredictable direction. So for the time being my personal interests and reflections on subjects, people, themes, projects, books, exhibitions, pictures etc. will set the direction and sometime in the future we will see if the pieces of this puzzle fall into place and form the frame for a new job life.

I think the following classical scene "You're the man now, Dog!" from the movie "Finding Forrester" says more than many words about how to go Walkabout. Take a look at the scene where Jamal Wallace discovers a new writer in his own self gently (!) provoked and pushed forward by his best friend a withdrawn writer played by Sean Connery.

As in the movie I will see if it possible to turn the pages in the job seeking quicker and more pleasantly from page 1 to 2 by using Walkabout!
 

Why am I doing this?

I guess a lot of whys can be asked!

But this is first of all a personal process - working myself out of an unemployment situation. It is an attempt to turn a complicated position into a positive and more energetic creative work flow by letting coincidence and interest rule. I think there are alternatives to traditional job seeking by applications and that to go Walkabout is one of them with the purpose of increasing the network and broaden my own horizon at the same time.

Another purpose is to take a position to or try to relate to habits, behaviors, taboos and myths connected to being unemployed. It is very common in our society to put people into boxes without asking which one we want to belong to. As time goes by we begin to believe that our picture of the boxed people is true and people inside and outside the box start to act and behave according to this picture. Very much of this is unspoken knowledge in our society, among friends, family and former colleagues but does it have to be like that? And are there connections to other areas, groups of people which it could be interesting to learn from? I think very little has been said and written about these issue so my intention is to reflect during the course of events how I feel about it - a kind of mirroring of my self - from a human perspective and reflect on subjects related to the psychology of being unemployed. My hope is to contribute to a more visible context and a more equal dialog among us about this area instead of just being hold captured in my own box trying to get out!

Why do I have to make this public? Sometimes it is better to face the facts and look the situation in the face and let the unsaid be said - actually it already feels better and has created a more spacious mental room. Other reasons are to push myself forward since this Walkabout is about breaking habits too.

Why is the language English? Because I want to share this with known and unknown relations and friends across borders and again by doing something different than just continue writing in Danish is another way of extending the boundaries.

And least but not last. If this could inspire others to try something a bit different in an unemployment situation - write a book, make a movie, build something, join something - anything that makes it easier to put one foot in front of the other and to keep the personal process on the right track - is has been worth doing.

Feel free to put forward more whys and to comment in Danish if it feels more convenient.

What is this about?

This is my first Blog post – it has been on its way for a long time – but more about that in a later post! - First a few words to introduce this Blog.

I have realized that frustration, bitterness, self-pity and concern about the future has a good chance of creating a negative self-image for me as unemployed.

This Blog is an attempt of trying to turn the inside out when dealing with an uncertain unemployment situation – to face the facts of the job situation in a more personal and responsible way – giving the search for a new job more life and more real authenticity.

The inspiration to this process comes from the Australian Aboriginals who "go Walkabout" in their teens. They walk in the wilderness for a period of six months as a rite of passage to seek spiritual enlightenment. They are following the exact routes – "the Song Lines" - as were their ancestors. Even though I'm not on a spiritual journey I'm still out in the wilderness searching for my own personal Song Lines when it comes to finding a new job – and even though I don't have ceremonial rituals to set the scene and guide the traveler I will replace this with my own creativity as a driver to move the walk forward towards my own Symphony!

So what will I do? I will take the liberty of spending time on reflection on subjects, people, themes, projects etc. which catches my interest – some of these thoughts and reflections will reach this Blog others will be unwritten. But the idea is to use this Blog as a companion during my Walkabout and brick by brick see the jigsaw puzzle unite to a picture of the new context for my next job – in respect for the Aboriginals let's start the walk!