Rather than start of this new year with the standard “let’s make resolutions” oration, I’d like to share a feel good story about my cat. Naturally, as you’ve seen in my past monthly newsletters, I’ll eventually relate the story to the career transition process through analogies and comparisons. Lucky you! (It’s a good story though.)

 

Shortly before Christmas this year, during our first winter snow-turn to rain-turn back to snow and then freeze storms of the season, one of  my family’s 3 cats decided (actually she “got the boot” for waking up my wife at 3:00 a.m.) to venture outside, to do whatever cats do in sub-freezing weather. Adopted as a stray when she was a kitten, this was pretty common behavior for Grey (Yes, she is grey and we weren’t very creative in naming her. We also have one named Blackie, who is of course black.), our oldest and prissiest feline. Going outside in the middle of the night, regardless of the weather, and returning to the front door in the morning was standard behavior and not unexpected.

 

Unfortunately, we woke up to find our outdoors covered in an eight inch layer of ice covered snow and no cat. Figuring that she probably found refuge in the “crazy cat lady” neighbor’s house up the street or that she was hunkered down in someone’s garage, we didn’t panic and immediately begin posting “Cat Missing” posters around the neighborhood. The “dumb cat” didn’t come home, but would likely be back when the weather calmed down and she got hungry enough. Or visa, versa, depending upon which came first. It wasn’t all that strange for the cat to stay away for a day and show up at dinner time.

 

When she still hadn’t shown up when we returned home from work, the family (mainly my wife, who felt guilty for “giving her the boot”) did start to worry and sent me out to search for her. After scouring the neighborhood and checking in with the crazy cat lady (no offense intended, maybe eccentric is a more polite way to reference her), I returned home with no cat and much less of an expectation that she would be coming back anytime soon. Still some belief but, with -20 degree weather, it wasn’t very realistic. Two and a half weeks later, even my overly optimistic nature had succumbed to the expectation that we had seen the last of our beloved Grey. 

 

Then, returning home from work a few days ago, I checked my answering machine and was shocked by a message left by my neighbor across the street. It seems he had been working out in his yard, attempting to remove the last of the ice built up in his driveway, when he heard a cat crying from under an old storage shed on his property. He called to find out if I was missing one of mine and to tell me that he had dug some holes in the ice around the shed but that the cat wouldn’t (or couldn’t) come out. Grabbing a flashlight and expecting to either find nothing or, worse yet, a half dead and frozen animal, I headed across the road to discover a scared, much thinner, and miraculously alive cat – our buddy Grey!

 

I brought her home to my wife and daughter who were as surprised and grateful as I was. She had survived under a frozen shed, without food, for 18 days. Simply amazing!

 

Now, aside from a feel good story, what’s any of this got to do with career transition? What, if anything, is the connection?

 

Well, after the cat returned, I was thinking about what the poor animal must have been thinking and feeling while trapped out there the whole time. Assuming of course that a cat’s walnut sized brain actually thinks and feels like my pea sized (by my wife’s estimate) brain does, I can only imagine how alone it felt and then, when it was finally discovered, how grateful it must have felt to have finally been rediscovered by somebody who cared enough to take it in. And that’s where my thoughts turned to the career transition / job search process.

 

First, you find out that your position is being eliminated and, like the cat, you start out a little angry for the situation and maybe even utter a few “why me’s”. Before long, you accept your lot and begin the process of looking for a new career (in the cat’s case, a way out). At first, like the cat, you’re likely fairly optimistic. After all, you’re fairly resilient and have been through rough patches before. At this point, you don’t have any perception of this situation lasting as long as it will. You believe that any time now, someone who values you will come looking and you’ll be back to a secure routine in no time.

 

Unfortunately, things don’t go like we envision them sometimes. For the cat, minutes turned to hours and then days. For some of us in transition, days turn into weeks and then weeks into months. It doesn’t seem fair, but that’s reality. In the cat’s case, she probably did everything that her instincts told her to do to survive. She likely slept in a corner, wrapped in a ball, ate snow, and cried out for help - all to no avail. At this point, I imagine that despair likely set in and that she began to give up any hope of getting out. Luckily, nature provided her with a great deal more resiliency then even she knew she had (yes, I’m humanizing the cat but stick with me) and this forced her to keep on crying out, even when part of her just didn’t believe that she would be found. Finally, the neighbor heard her and you know the rest of the story.

 

My point is that I think we are a lot more like the cat then we realize. I think all of us have a greater level of resiliency that we know and that, although we sometimes might despair, our instinct is to keep moving forward.

 

So, if you’re feeling a bit of hopelessness, like old Grey must have felt, maybe it’s time to make some noise so that someone can come to your aid. Maybe it’s time to reach out to that network again or, better yet, expand it. Maybe it’s time to call on the staffing firm you’ve been avoiding, or to contact the local employment service and “bug them” a little more forcibly.  It might even be time to start fresh with a revamped resume and job search strategy (something a career transition coach can help you with).

 

The simply truth is that we can’t dictate when goods things will happen to us. The cat couldn’t predict when it would get rescued and we can’t predict when we’ll land the next great job. All that we can do is keep on believing that someone will finally hear us. What other choice do we have?

In Grey’s words – “meow”, “meow”, “meow”, “meow”.

Keep it up until you’re noticed and good thing will surely follow!

You will eventually be found.