
- John Duncan Site Author
An open and candid view of an ex Senior Management Professional.
Hi my name is John Duncan and I am writing this article to hopefully inspire the thousands of you out there that are just like me at this moment in time.
February 9th 2009 was the day my world crashed because I was made REDUNDANT!!.
Now initially I thought no problem having been in management for over seventeen years I will get a job next week or month.How wrong was I.
What are the first things companies cut back on in a recessive climate ,Yes your right Training,Purchasing and Management structure.I know this from experience looking back to the early nineties and beyond and this has been further cemented in my mind by the fact that I have applied for over two hundred jobs in the last seven months and have been lucky to even get a reply from most of them.Although the online revolution has exploaded our environment for the good it has however opened up a faceless society to mankind.How easy is it now to not speak to someone when you can just send an email instead, especially if the matter you need to address is one of contention.No matter how you look at it we have to ride along with progression and use it for a positive outlook rather than a negative one.
How I have coped with Redundancy / Unemployment since February 2009.
On February 10th 2009 alarm bells began to ring in my mind no phone calls no emails on my PDA nothing but silence!.I went from returning emails at ten oclock in the evening (to my wife’s annoyance) and planning my next day in advance as I have never been a “nine to five”person to total silence.I thought why aren’t my former colleagues calling me at least to say how sorry they are that I have gone and surely they still need my advice on company matters after all its only been a day since I was last with them,but the reality is that they are still busy in their working day and I am not!.
Now I quickly realised that I have to keep myself busy in what is about to become a turbulent time for me.That kitchen needs decorating, something I have been putting off for sometime now and three days later it was done.What is next? I thought,oh yes the lounge which took four days top to bottom and then our bedroom and every door in the house got a lick of paint and to be honest the house had never been so tidy.
At the end of February my redundancy came through so off to the travel agency and holiday booked for the end of March last year.I thought I need the break to refocus and use the time to think especially if its nice and warm and to be brutally honest my wife needed the break as much as I did.While away in the Canaries alone with my wife and no kids I thought this is great and quite frankly did not want to come home,but reality kicks in especially when you get off that plane in the UK and its pouring with rain and you didn’t pack that coat before you left.
Now back home and after only a few days my mindset was back on getting a job,so application after application sent which incidentally was ninety nine percent online(remember faceless society) only to recieve nothing in my inbox.I still kept myself busy around the house but there is only so much decorating and cleaning you can do right.I started to become restless and found myself not being able to sleep at night indeed watching the news downstairs at four in the morning was becoming the norm!(so much for the holiday).Although not realising at this time my mind was turning into a depressive state.Every time I open the wardrobe I see suits and pre ironed shirts that haven’t moved for a few months and I remember thinking “I am useless” and “worthless”and felt a black hole was in front of me.
If I was on my own at this time God knows what might have happened,fortunately for me I have the love of a good wife who has been nothing but supportive ever since I met her,and she recommended I visit my local GP to see if they could help.Now I hate going to the doctors as I always feel there is a weakness in my make up if I have to do this(crazy I know).Anyway I left with a prescription in hand for antidepressants and sleeping pills.At first it was great as I had the first eight hours sleep in weeks but realised the prozac would not truly kick in for a month.During the next few weeks I noticed a change in my mindset ie not much emotion or worries going through my head which I must admit felt rather strange at first as I have always been a worrier you know like being able to pay the mortgage and bills etc.The down side of not having any emotions or worries is that you become complacent and to an extent lazy.
After a month or so after visiting the doctor I found myself drinking wine in the afternoon and watching day time TV only to be asleep on the sofa when my wife returned home from work and I would make the excuse that I was tired after having a busy day!!!(not).This went on for a month or so,you know go to the shop at 1pm buy a bottle of wine and had drunk it buy 3pm watching the TV.(buy the way how crap is daytime TV)!.What I didn’t realise was the fact that I was still in a deep state of depression and that was not going to go away no matter how I tried to mask it.Again my wife came to the rescue and hinted that I need to go back to my GP and seek even more help!,I remember thinking how can this be happening to me or even worse to a person that has never been unemployed in all of his thirty three years of working life.
I was sent on a course of depression workshops which I must admit I was dreading.To my horror on my first day I turned up to the session and discovered that there was me and six women! I remember thinking” Oh My God”what have I come to this for.However after the introductions I started to feel more at ease with myself realising that there are other people out there like me or at least in the same state of mind as me.I was depressed through unemployment but these women where there for different reasons ie mourning the death of loved ones or addiction to alcohol and even addiction to sleeping tablets!etc.I must admit I thought I performed well in these sessions purely because my corparate background kicked in on the tasks we where set and each session I felt was like a sort of business meeting and so on.After the workshops I was asked if I needed anymore therapy!(takes some getting used to that word)I declined and further more I did not renew my prescription for the prozac or sleeping tablets,My mindset was changing and maybe it was the workshops that changed it I don’t know,but my thoughts changed into if you don’t sort this situation out yourself no one will do it for you!.
What changed and let me move on.
Well it was my stepson’s birthday and we decided to buy him the laptop he was after.Thanks to Amazon it arrived and I remember setting it up for him you know loading stuff on it linking it to the wireless network (not that I am an IT Guru) or anything quite the opposite in fact.You see I have always used computers to be able to do my job and thats it,ironic really as I am writing this on a computer!.Anyway in June of last year a former colleague and friend got in touch with me as he had heard I was unemployed and wanted to put some work my way(phew at last).The long and short of it was that I was offered some consultancy work which was introducing his company to achieve an ISO QaulityManagement System ISO9001-2008 (sorry work background kicking in again!)and the immediate feeling was I AM WANTED AGAIN and my self worth was back.I was up at 7am shared the car with my wife ie, dropped her off and then got on with my day and the suit reappeared along with the pre ironed shirt(remember).I loved it for the next month I was back and I felt in the real world again and by the way achieved the system for them.I was lucky because I had more work from them, although purely on a consultative basis which lasted up until the end of September.This would not have happened if I didn’t buy that laptop oh! and by the way it is my stepson’s honestly! You see I was able to work onsite or at home with the laptop.
What next!
Although there was a hint of permanant employment from the previous company I soon realised I could not rely on it ie,sitting waiting for the phone to ring so my mind started racing away with me and I found myself surfing the internet for opportunities to make an income,but don’t get me wrong I was still applying for jobs out there about up to 130 at this time!!,I am still hopefull I suppose that I might get that 50K opportunity again and the sixty hours a week that go with it I will never learn!.Anyway I digress I was surfing the net and found a guy called Shaun Smith who is an entrepreneur running his own business along with a guy called Simon Stepsys and they market themselves as “How to Market Experts”.com of course!.
Then What!(Unemployment or Affiliate)?
Well after due consideration and some searches I decided to check these guys out and in fairness everthing came back positive,makes a change I suppose these days with the online phenomina that is the internet.Money by now, at this time is becoming more of an issue (redundancy dried up etc) and thank goodness for insurance (mortgage/loans) but I had a feeling that this was something ethical I needed to get involved with and lord knows I need some money by now!.I signed up to their system and although I am not ripping out any tree’s yet, I feel I have some gravitass and a focus to look forward to.You see these guys are raking in, so far up to £8000,000+ a year wow!! if I could achieve a tenth of that for now would do.
Summing up…
Iguess what I am trying to say here is ……
In my biopic “without the film”! as I hope the film will be created in your mind as you read my short biography of the last twelve months of my life.The overall message here is that ……..
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That you get out of life what you are prepared to put in to it.
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Nothing is as bad as it seems out there.
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Anything can be achieved in life if you put your mind to it.
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If you are unemployed or feeling down there is an alternative.
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Never loose sight to see how important your nearest and dearest and loved ones mean to you.
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And there are those ten little words(from my corporate days) IF IT IS TO BE IT IS UP TO ME!!.
I sincerely hope this short article has inspired those people like me out there and have been, or are going through the same experience that I have been through,I hope you can take some sort of solace in the writing of this post/blog,all the very best…….I apologise if there are any gramatical or spelling errors in this post as I have not checked it(my old boss would kill me by the lack of ATD)!
John
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If you can relate to this article and it has maybe helped you then please feel free to leave a comment below..cheers
pps….
If you are unemployed or just looking to earn some income on line then see below as these are just some of the people/products I have become an affilliate for…..
REMEMBER It costs nothing!! to become an Affilliate so you have nothing to lose but everything to GAIN..Good Luck…….
E-mail to ……. enquiries@itsallmymoney.co.uk
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