When your self-worth is tied to your work

On job hunting and chronic illness

Photo by Leone Venter on Unsplash

It’s been a year since I was last employed full time — the longest I’ve gone without regular work since I was 14.

By the time I took a buyout from BuzzFeed last summer, I was more than ready to leave. But I can’t exactly say that I’m happier now than I was when I made a steady income, talked shit every day with my smart, funny colleagues, and got at least some sense of meaning from my work. That meaning had gotten harder and harder to come by as the company crumbled around me and I grew increasingly disillusioned with covering algorithmically generated content and our era of cultural decline, but still. It was something.

I haven’t yet abandoned Twitter — will any of us ever call the stupid thing X? God help us — and I’ve appreciated seeing fellow freelance writers openly sharing their distress and despair there lately. Chris Steadman: “As a writer, I'm used to my income ebbing and flowing. Every time it ebbs (I'm currently in one of my longest ebbs ever), I realize anew just how much of my sense of self-worth takes a hit without it. Wonder what a world that didn't determine our value this way would feel like...” Same and same, man.

Then there was this brutal thread from Megan A. Taros: “I’ve been unemployed almost a year. I have freelance work, but I’m finding it less fulfilling as time goes on. I feel like I’m nobody. I have nothing to offer anyone. This industry is awful. I am so deeply sad, folks.”