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Out of context: Reply #75497
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- Horp21
Thought I'd log back in to add a comment.
While I'm here, I'm going to write some shite that nobody needs to read.
It's a weird world out there, for a million different reasons. But in one specific aspect it is quite worryingly weird. Work.
My dad became finally, properly terminally ill last April and we were told he really didn't have long to go. Like, days or *maaaybe* weeks.
I was just finishing a long fixed term contract (FTC), so I made the quite difficult decision to delay looking for my next FTC as my dad dying would probably take up about 3 months of time. My mum has been married to him since she was 16 (Now mid 80s) and he was the man of the house who controlled everything. So it felt like there would be lots to do to get my mum settled and set up for life on her own.
Curiously, I saw absolutely no FTC positions being advertised anyway, so back in May-July 2023, it seemed my break nicely coincided with an industry lull. I've had 3 month breaks many times in the past between contracts and I'm ok with that. It's a perk if you budget for it.
My dad, despite being to all intents and purposes a perished cadaver in a hospital bed at my parents home, just didn't die. He wasn't able to do anything, and remained asleep for a lot of the time. There was nothing left of him at all because he stopped eating and only sipped water of the occasional cup of watery soup. But he just kept living, which frustrated him immensely.
On the occasions where he was awake and able to speak, he would talk about how much he wanted to die and how infuriating it was that he was just still here every single day.
He lost all sense of time and reality and would have the weirdest conversations (instructions for us, mostly) in short spurts before drifting back into the fog.
Over many months I got called up to my parents place countless times because "This is the end now. He's fallen into a coma and he's got hours left". But I'd arrive and he'd open his eyes, greet me, and request some weird food item he'd never eaten before in his life. Over and over this happened. I've done thousands of miles.
The longer it went on, the more certain it was he'd go any minute, and there were zero opportunities being advertised anyway. So I just focussed on my parents, and started getting into the all the admin of death so we were ready once he finally passed.
LinkedIn started filling up with "Open to work" profile pics, and posts about there being no work. The narrative kicke doff that A.I. was destroying the creative industries already. Copywriters, translators and strategists were all out of work. Creatives were out of work. People were becoming desperate. But my mum and dad were my priority, so I stayed out of it.
My dad finally passed on February 15th. His funeral is next Tuesday.
With regards to work though, by October last year I needed to try and do something. I'd been offered 2 freelance consultancy pieces by old clients and that helped, but I was not seeing any long term opportunities to start pursuing. I applied to some full time jobs, but there weren't many, and I didn't hear back from most.
One of the consultancy pieces was for a major UK delivery company, and I did some immersion research as part of the consultancy work - understanding how their business works from the ground up. I had asked to be placed on payroll inside IR35 and taxed at source for the work, because I no longer have a LTD company and companies rarely work with sole trader freelancers these days.
So after that project finished I asked if I could return to the ground level and do some pre-Christmas delivery work whilst on payroll. A really weird request for a senior level consultant to ask about van driving work, but I explained my situation, and they needed people before Christmas, so I did three months of delivery driving from October to January.
Weak pay, hard work, but oddly very enjoyable. I really liked it. Good physical fitness, fresh air, working by yourself with no ambiguous problems to solve. There's just one way to do it right, and it's not hard to do that.
I figured it might just be time to quit my career and take a form of retirement that puts me in the basic jobs market as opposed to the high paid career market. It was dooable. We paid off our mortgage last year and earning much less becomes manageable without a mortgage commitment.
I got spooked though. Over those three months, talking to many of my colleagues in that delivery role, I learned that many had opted to do that work as a stop gap during industry lulls. These were highly skilled people from high paid career roles. Very senior, very specialist. Some of them were C-Suite level people from globally operating UK brands - household name brands.
But they said they found that the stop gap job went on for too long and after six months of being a delivery driver, nobody would take them seriously in their career anymore. Nobody wants to entrust the future of an organisation to a van driver. So they got ensnared, and stuck there. Some of them had been there for 20 years by this point. Their former careers a distant memory.
So I decided not to risk that just yet, and I pulled out after three months of working as a delivery driver. I can bury three months given the consultancy work connection, but six months... I'd be cast in stone.
In December, before I quit that work, I had applied to a bunch of full time roles that came up on LinkedIn. Not many of them were 100% suitable, but I could bend in to them with a bit of effort.
I got two responses out of maybe 30 CV/Resume slingshots.
One was for a stalwart UK design company seeking a strategist, the other was for a global PR firm.
Both started the process at the beginning of December with an initial videocall interview. Both said they wanted to progress to the next stage.
The next stage was in January and both were keen to progress to the final stage.
Design company arranged for me to meet the ECD and the head of client services (HCS) as the final stage before making a decision. They had whittled down to just me and one other candidate. Final two.
ECD just didn't take to me is my best guess, and the HCS seemed to want more of a project manager than a brand strategist.
Almost exactly 3 months to the day they told me they'd gone for the other candidate. Lots of puffery about how much they loved me and thought I was fantastic blah blah blah but the other candidate had assured them more of their capabilities around the basic project management stuff and the mechanics of campaign anatomy and process. I was, they felt, a "wonderful creative strategist" but their immediate needs were more prosaic.
As much as I really needed to land a job and be back at work, I really didn't mind being passed over. They were a bit like an eccentric aristocratic and slightly inbred family; cut off from society and operating along their own rules and behaviours cultivated over decades in isolation. I had already sensed it would be wonky and weird, and largely about navigating big eccentric personalities that didn't run on contemporary rails.
The global PR job took me all the way to meeting 5 senior people and then on to the CEO for a final meeting. That meeting happened the day after my dad died and I should have cancelled, but I chose instead to crack on given the short notice. I did advise them I had not been able to prepare due to my dad's death, but I felt disoriented and unfocussed. I felt like I may have come across as drunk or addled, but I made my decision to attend so that's on me.
The feedback was that the CEO thought I was really great, and that it was uncommon of her to speak so favourably of a candidate... however she also didn't feel the role I had applied for was quite right - I was way more senior and had skills that wouldn't often be called upon for that role (and she was right about that). So they said they wanted to talk to me about other possibilities in their vast global org, and they would set up a meeting to discuss other possibilities.
Since then, I got ghosted. Totally ghosted. It was a 'no' dressed up as a shmooze.
I'm now in the stage 1 running for three other jobs. The job market is picking up I think. However, the clock is ticking for me.
I'm 54, I've been away from the coal face of my sector for 8 months now. I have two/three meaty freelance projects to show for that time, but that's all. They were all upstream analysis and consultancy projects so I can't even use them as case studies because there is no outcome (yet) and nothing was finalised.
This might be the end of my career, after all. It feels like it all hangs on a very fine thread right now.
If I could, I'd go back to studying for a few years but I cannot decide what I would study, and I don't know how I'd support my family while I did that.
So I'm in a limbo state for the time being. I have no idea where this story goes next.
You don't need to read this. I'd skip it, if I were you.
- LOL 18 not 16Horp
- ^ My dad wasn't Elvis.Horp
- These side notes are unrepresentative of the post, which is a good read. Good luck with the search, Horp.Fax_Benson
- Thanks Fax. It's a bit of a brain dump waffle. Therapeutic typing. I appreciate you reading it xHorp
- Best of luck Horp. I once suggested a former colleague for a writing job, he got it and said he wasn't sure he'd ever get one in the industry again...Nutter
- last I checked on LinkedIn he had become a creative director of a ad agency. So sometimes its just one recommendation that gets the ball rolling.Nutter
- Good reading Horp. I share with you the "vertigo" that is felt right now in our sector. Good luck in your search ;)OBBTKN
- Cheers Nutter. I feel like this is a Mickey Rourke moment for me. A wilderness period where I learn gratitude and humility and whatever comes next I grab it ...Horp
- ... and give it my absolute all for whatever years remain of my career, then I can slip gracefully into service job world and waddle into retirement age.Horp
- Thanks OBBTKN. Yeah, it's sobering stuff seeing it all getting hollowed out with no sense of what replaces it. I mostly worry about my two kids working futuresHorp
- The gruesomely weird thing about my dad was he kind of embodied the jump scare with the emaciated man in the movie Se7en...Horp
- He actually looked very similar, and we'd all be in the room with him, silently, all wondering if he'd now gone and we were just looking at his corpse...Horp
- and then suddenly he'd open his eyes and say, in a panic-stricken way "Don't let the nurses steal my record player!" and we'd all be "OH FUCK" and then...Horp
- laughing hysterically at the fact that he JUST KEPT DOING THAT. He'd leap up and demand a baguette, or order me to protect his antique ink well at all costs...Horp
- or make me promise to donate his cricket bat to a museum.
It was comedy horror, every day.Horp - "shhhhh, he's gone. He's finally gone"
(silence) (Respectful silence and reflection)
"I NEED A DIGITAL WATCH"Horp - Good read, Horp. Although we might not be going through the same specific things there is a shared feeling. We're with you!palimpsest
- ha ha Horp on those commentsNutter
- Sorry to read your plight, but I'm feeling this very same situation right now creeping up on me. I'm 47 and get a distinct feeling that by the time im 54....Ianbolton
- my mum won't be around much longer and my career is already stagnant and I'm thinking where the hell am I going. Like existential meltdown is coming.Ianbolton
- Make QBN your journal if you want?! I'd be interested in seeing how you find your way through Horp. Thanks for sharing buddy and sorry for your loss. xIanbolton
- Cheers Ian. Sorry you're going through it, but I personally take some solace from knowing that *everyone* (not *absolutely everyone, obvs) is going through it..Horp
- with regards to careers, and age, and especially the creative industries. I might pop back in at certain milestones to drop a log on the blog.Horp
- Studying? Are you high? Fuck that shit.crazyprick
- Dude, start writing. This post is really well written. Hope some new doors open for you soon, Horpstoplying
- I'll keep reading. Sorry about your Pa.garbage
- Yikes. What a ride.
Did you ever get in touch with that connection in introed you to at Hofstede?Continuity - Hey Continuity. We said hi. He and I. I wasn't really in a place to do anything more. I'm only just really gearing back up to normality and need now, in fact.Horp
- Crazyprick... hahaha
I'd love to just go and fuck around at university. Good times.Horp - You have a house and two wonderful kids. If you want to, you can just duck out from now on. You made it anyway. But do start writing :)Nairn
- ...or a podcast. They're all the rage, I hear.Nairn
- Sorry, I just read that back and it sounded a bit defeatist. It wasn't intended so.Nairn
- Family first.crazyprick
- ^OBBTKN
- People sometimes say to me "Start writing" but I'm no writer... what the fuck would I write about? Nobody is going to pay to read my mind-clearouts, and...Horp
- ... I've got nothin' else.Horp
- "If you want to, you can just duck out from now on" Honestly Nairn I would if I could find the right thing. Just enough money and easy and simple work. Elusive!Horp
- Less or more we are all a bit there. Probs we are one of the first generations aging socially online. Not sure yet if is better or worse.maikel
- Also not sure on that Maikel. In some ways it's reassuring to know it's not just you, but equally it's a gaping cavern of darkness right there in your hand.Horp
- Awesome read Horp! Yeh the industry seems a little funny at the mo, but in the last month it seems to have picked up a little or is that just me?Projectile
- Please remember, when you're old and on your death bed... it is your god given right to fuck with your kids. I NEED A 2032 MODEL APPLE WATCH!!Projectile
- Hahahaha, he definitely did that Projectile.Horp
- And yeah, in a way it seems to be picking up in as much as there are recruitment ads for (in my case) strategy. But, the interview process is about 3 months...Horp
- and honestly to me it feels like nobody knows what they want or if they can *actually* take somebody on...Horp
- I'm quite a marmite candidate. People are either going to feel I am right or know I am wrong, instantly. To me it's clear in the first meeting, but I get...Horp
- dragged through the entire process and at the end I get told "ehhhh, we're not sure. You offer some great stuff, but we don't know if it's the stuff we need...Horp
- right now. We need to have a meeting"... and then, ghosted. I actually know very quickly if it's not for me, but I have to keep shtum: I'll try anything RNHorp