Yesterday Gus and I went to meet up with a new Rover client—I’ll call her Ashley—and her sweet middle-aged black lab, whom I’ll be watching later this month while Ashley, her husband and their two little kids go on holiday. Ashley said she’d hired me because she saw that I was an American who’d recently arrived in the UK; she’s American as well, and had a tough time adjusting when she first arrived in Liverpool 8 years ago. She sympathizes.
“I was knocked off my pedestal,” she told me. We were sitting on her porch, overlooking her lovely back garden, while Gus zoomed around in vain, hoping the lazy lab would chase him, and Ashley’s four-year-old puttered around in his playhouse.
Ashley had been a marketing executive back in New York, where she’d worked on several major international campaigns. For many months upon her arrival to Liverpool—she’d married a Brit, like I had—nobody would hire her. She couldn’t even get an interview. Even when, like me, she set her sights far lower, applying to become a teaching assistant or for gigs in retail, she heard nothing.
Ashley theorizes that outside of cosmopolitan London, Brits don’t really see the value of an American education and American work experience, or at least they don’t see how our qualifications would be applicable to what tend to be hyper-localized jobs. Plus, like anywhere, people just tend to hire who they know.
After her move, Ashley and her husband’s roles were completely reversed. Where, in New York, she’d been the primary breadwinner by a long shot, she made none of her own income in England for months that, when she started having kids, turned into years. If she wasn’t able to work, she told her husband many times, she thought she was going to lose her mind.
After meeting with a career coach who encouraged her to think about wha she really loves doing, Ashley considered how much satisfaction she gets from cleaning her house. But marketing executives aren’t supposed to be housecleaners. Nevertheless, she started working for very little money for a cleaning crew for a few months, which inspired her to start her own home organization company. She told me she’s never been happier.
I envy Ashley, both for figuring out a new path, and for her husband’s income that saw them through the tough times (he’s a doctor). And I’m grateful to her for confirming my suspicions that there isn’t something seriously wrong with me for failing to find steady work in England.
I’ve been getting more Rover bookings these past couple weeks, which has been a huge relief. I hate that Lynette has had to cover the majority of our household bills while I’ve cobbled together a paltry freelance income amid my endless job hunt. It feels awful. And it’s not healthy longterm for our relationship.
I wrote about those worries of imbalance almost exactly a year ago. It’s frustrating to feel like not nearly enough has changed. By which I mean: I haven’t changed enough.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Shannon Keating to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.