How to Rebound from Joblessness

You might say, "Aren't you jumping the gun?" After all, I haven't sold anything that goes for big bucks yet although I've been published by my church and have extensive documentation on a prominent anti-cult site run by cult expert, Rick Ross of the Ross Institute, http://www.rickross.com and http://forum.rickross.com. I also market my writings on this website. Nevertheless, I firmly believe that I'm on the way back and that my star will rise again.

The last time I needed to go for retraining was when I went to college. Originally, I took a crash course in computer programming and landed a job as a programmer, but I hated computers or at least that type of work in programming, and my family decided to put me through school. I was jobless between September of 1979 and June of 1988 except for some part time work that I did during that time period for temporary companies.

After college, I landed a job with AT&T as a computer programmer (again!) and I found work using my Master of Science in Management degree. My client group was Market Analysis and Forecasting (MA&F) consisting of subject matter experts (SMEs in professional jargon) relating to economics, statistics, engineering, mathematics and operations research. I found working for them to be challenging and exciting. It was not the usual, run of the mill, type of work in computers that most people wind up in.

My career at AT&T lasted until April of '94 and I went to Consolidated Edison Power Company, in New York for a few months until the rabbi I used to follow, Shlomo Carlebach, passed on and I made arrangements to go to Israel and try to get a career together over there. That now takes us to January of 1995.

The trip to Israel was catastrophic for me. I couldn't find suitable work and I refused to take Israeli Welfare (B'tuach L'eumi) benefits and I became sick as a result. (Pride definitely is one of the seven deadly sins take it from me).

I have Israeli citizenship but I got nowhere financially from that move, even though my Master's degree was done in Israel at Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Beer Sheba, in conjunction with Boston University. (For the record I graduated in September of 1986 and finished Magna Cum Laude, third in my class).

I came back to the USA and stayed at a friend's for a while until I couldn't stay there any longer and I went to the homeless shelter run by Catholic Charities that was in their old building in New Brunswick, NJ. It was pretty ribald and living with all those people with a variety of their own problems was very difficult.

Someone at the shelter tried to get me to join a Hebrew Christian congregation and that "overloaded my circuits" so to speak and I asked them to take me to the mental hospital, University Behavioral Healthcare, in Piscataway, NJ. I told them what was on my mind.

I had actually tried to commit suicide right on top of Rabbi Carlebach's grave while I was in Israel, no less. I was diagnosed with a schizoaffective disorder and also with bipolar disorder. I've been on Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) ever since then and it's been eleven years now.

I had come to the erroneous conclusion that everything I ever did in my life was essentially not good. I had given up on my hobbies that include playing the guitar and making rubber masks, puppets and props. But the hospital had a guitar and I played it while there and they had some sculpting clay and plaster so I sculpted a mutant dinosaur head, made a plaster mold and a friend of mine loaned some money to me so I could buy some liquid latex and make a small puppet head. I was on the mend finally and I really have to thank UBHC for all their help.

I fight back very hard against my illness, I have to. When I was first diagnosed, I was extremely depressed and I slept up to sixteen hours a day. Some people say, "Why don't you just 'snap out of it'". It doesn't work that way. The problem is spiritual, psychological and chemical in nature. It's complicated and not simple to recover from depression. It's taken me years to recover but recent events look very positive.

I went to a day program called "The Club" in New Brunswick from October of 1995 to around 2000 and they worked very hard on trying to rehabilitate me. They told me that I was not like all the other people who they worked with. They had a deep conviction that I was worth saving and that I was salvageable. I was always under the impression that given the right field, I could make a living again and become gainfully employed in a high paying career.

I had a friend in graduate school named Joel H. who gave me a really good piece of sage advice. He told me, "Try one thing to earn a living. If that doesn't work, try another. Just keep trying different things until something works out." It's really good advice. I know it's hard to stay positive when there's so much adversity and negativity in a person's life but you have to fight back.

Another thing I did was go to NJ's Employment Services in New Brunswick because there I met and rubbed elbows with people from all walks of life who need to find new work. One person was a consultant and he goes to the service's Professional Service Group every time one of his contracts expires. He goes there to marshal the courage to fight back and look for new work. It's not easy, but it's doable.

Some of the things I've done include taking courses in subjects that interest me like music theory and composition courses for guitar. I did very well in these courses and I started to "feel my oats" again as a result. I also got back into my rubber-working hobby and attended some science fiction and comic conventions where I sold some of my work including the Hulk, Godzilla and the Son of Godzilla.

Another major factor in my recovery has been the love and kindness I've been shown since joining the First Presbyterian Church of Avenel, NJ. My knowledge of the Old Testament is unusual because I studied it with a large number of Jewish outreach organizations and outreach workers. My knowledge of what the Jewish people call the "Tanakh" or the Old Testament comes in handy in the church's Sunday School and a Bible Study I go to run in the home of two of the pillars of this community. My whole treatment team has noted the improvement in my condition.

Probably the best thing I did over the years, besides joining the church, was take two different IQ test, one with http://www.emode.com and the second with http://www.tickle.com.The test are actually administered on the internet and are free. Those tests pointed me in the direction of my new desired field: freelance writing.

Emode's test called me a "Word Warrior" and Tickle's test called me a "Visionary Philosopher". My strongest suit is my ability to use words that is in the top five percent of the population in the United States. So taking this course is a matter of putting my best foot forward.

My overall IQ score puts me up at better that the top five percent of the population in the country. So I'm in pretty good shape when it comes to my raw ability to compete.

I also found out that I had talents and career choices that I never knew I had due to the fact that, West Hollow Junior High School did not give me accurate results and a proper analysis of the psychometric tests they gave me. I found out that besides becoming a businessperson, like an accountant or a CEO of a company, I could also become a sculptor, a psychologist, a private investigator, a writer or an architect. So I'm opting to become the CEO of my own freelance writing company.

The latter two vocations were news to me because my junior high guidance counselor told me not to try becoming an architect because, "[You'd] build the pyramids point down." It turns out that it's not the case so it's worth it to take the IQ tests and analyze them by myself.

A third test I took pointed me in the direction of becoming a writer and based upon my interests and talents, I decided to enroll in Penn Foster's course in freelance writing which is the course I'm actually writing this piece for as my final project.

The course discusses the various markets both fiction and non-fiction and how to become published based on which markets are most accessible to a new writer. I've found this course to be "just what the doctor ordered", pretty much literally as well as figuratively.

I breezed through this course. I had been working on it for less than two months and have completed eleven of the twelve examinations scoring and had an A average. I just finished working on the last multiple-choice test and achieved a 95 and then worked on the final piece that will be the final manuscript.

It only took me about 1 hour to write the final and I got a 95 for the essay entitled, "The Dark Side of Richard M. Green - My Preoccupation with the World of Monsters."

According to Penn Foster, this course is supposed to take a minimum of nine months to complete, but I finished way ahead of schedule. I plan on submitting all four manuscripts that I've written for the course to a variety of magazines and newspapers as I have finished the course. The revenues I hope to gain in the selling of my pieces that I wrote for this course are hopefully going to be the source of the funds to pay for the bulk of the courses fees.

I recommend this course to anyone who has the talent for becoming a writer and I will keep on recommending this course over and over again. It's professional and thorough. And it's also very inexpensive considering the vast potential to make a very sizeable living in the field as a writer.

One of the reasons that I opted for this career path is that a person can earn up to 85 thousand dollars a year with some experience. I related to a friend of mine that once I got a new career I wanted to earn almost double what I made as a computer programmer/analyst because you can't really do much these days with fifty two thousand dollars a year.

Later on, it occurred to me that there must be a way to publish on line without needing to package up query letters and manuscripts. So, I found AC, which publishes my materials.

One of my supervisors at AT&T wanted to buy a condo but he couldn't afford the down payment based on his salary. This is a pretty sad commentary on the cost of housing.

One of the reasons I took this up is the vast potential for earnings. I told Rabbi Fried, my mentor, that I needed like a 100K per year because 50K dollars doesn't to that far.

And in this day and age, many IT jobs went overseas to India. I needed retraining and I came to the right place.