How do you cope with suddenly being jobless?

“Dear Rod,

This week will be the last week for your lessons. So you need to give all the students scores for this term. Thank you for what you have done for our school.

Joy.”

I received the above email at 11am on Monday 4 January and my last day of employment and earnings is 8 January: this from my “co-teacher” Joy (a Chinese English teacher at our middle school, who communicates all necessary announcements to me). I was half-surprised she did not add “Happy New Year” to the bleak little missive as it was my first day back at work after the New Year holiday. But I think it vaguely occurred to Joy that the “bad news” and best wishes for the New Year just may be in poor taste.

Yeah, it was a shock. One of the biggest traumas in our times is to lose a job. It’s apparently up there with death, divorce, moving home (forcible eviction must be the worst in that category) and moving countries. I am sure all readers on this blog have experienced at least three of these traumas. How do we deal with them, transform them?

Well, I went into shock. I immediately went to Joy’s office and asked, “Are there any problems between me and the school?” She gave me a blank, confused stare. “No, no problems. The principal just told me this. The children must now study for the tests.” We foreigner teachers are not usually involved in tests and invigilation. I knew this but was still sure I would be able to work until at least the twentieth of January. I have some February winter classes lined up at another organisation and a Saturday job, so not all is lost.

“Can I come back in March, the next semester?” There was a hint of pleading in my voice as I tried to search for any more “truth”.

“Yes, I am sure.”

I tried to read past the blankness in her face, its friendly ignorance about my shock at the news. But I couldn’t penetrate that slight smile, just a fraction more of an upward curve than Mona Lisa’s.

This is how contract employment at schools in China works. You go through an agency as most schools are not licensed to hire laowai, foreigners, and either you get paid a salary (usually not good) or get paid by the hour, which is better. I was being paid by the hour. So here I was in a situation where my expected salary for the month had just been reduced by nearly three quarters. And not even a “Happy New Year”?

My interest in writing this blog is the traumas many of us go through. I have “dealt” with deaths, moving, losing jobs now five times, changing countries. How do we deal with those; what tools are we given to deal with them?

Notice above how my way to deal with the discourteous four days’ notice, and no apology, was humour: “And not even a “Happy New Year”?”

My second “way of dealing” was to go into a kind of shock and a complete lack of motivation in teaching the rest of my lessons for the day. As far as I was concerned, I had been treated like shit, and readers know I rarely swear on blogs, unless it is appropriate. I left at lunch time and sent Joy a message. “I cannot do the afternoon classes as I must now find another job. After Friday I have no work. I also want to try and go for interviews”. I got back the empathic, compassionate message, “OK”. (See? I am using sarcasm to cope.) Indeed, I did go on the internet and trawled for work and sent off emails.

What was amusing was the series of text messages I received that afternoon from the manageress, Jessica, at the agency that put me into the school and which pays me. She would have been told I now finished on the eighth. One text message was, “The school just told us you have quit and are looking for another job? What’s wrong?”

Come on guys, that text message is hilarious. By now Jessica must have known I was out of work by Friday, so there was in essence no job to quit, and, um, of course I would be looking for work elsewhere. And her question, “What’s wrong?”?? Given the fact I was just told I was out of a job, hers could be the dumbest question I have ever been asked in my life. Any contenders for dumber questions?

Naturally, I dealt with despondency and a sense of failure this week. This is apparently more typical of men than women. “You are a failure”, the inner voice kept telling me. “No you’re not,” demurred Chookie, my missus. I dealt with that by cancelling some more lessons as I really then couldn’t give a stuff for the school because of the way they had treated me. Again, my entire sense of motivation to do my job, which I am usually very conscientious about, was lost. Also, Chookie, was really sick in bed and could use my company. That — just somehow — was now far more important.

One of the things I like doing to enjoy life more and to stay upbeat and creative is reading inspirational literature. I know some people out there gag on that. But people like Deepak Chopra and Eckhart Tolle are most inspiring. Who on earth wants to turn to Freud or Jean-Paul Sartre for inspiration and solace? For example, Deepak Chopra recently brought out a book called Why is God Laughing? In the book I appreciated being reminded that we tend to rely on external events for our happiness. Our identities are based on our jobs, and that that is who we are, which is a lie. So, if I lose my job, I am a failure. Not true. Laughter, of course, he discusses as one way of detaching or distancing oneself from externally based identities such as job, title or money — and losing them. “Problems are just opportunities in disguise”, as he says elsewhere in the book, hardly a new one to me, but one that I enjoyed being reminded about and using to shift my focus on gloom.

Some of what Deepak Chopra writes is common sense — and common sense is often not common practice, some will say — but it is inspired common sense that is just great in times like these. He says of challenges: “In Nature every challenge is met with a response. As dinosaurs die out, mammals thrive. As ferns give way to flowering plants, insects learn to feed on pollen. Creation and destruction move together, constantly in touch with each other.” This reminded me that we are far more than our jobs (yeah, yeah, easy to say, sure), which, in my case, was here one day, gone the next. Deepak then asks the reader to answer three simple questions. If your answer is “no” to all of them, then — glorified common sense — it is time to change direction, or something.

Am I acting easily, without struggle?

Do I enjoy what I am doing?

Are results coming of their own accord?

My answer to all three, right now, in terms of my job, is no. Which means I have to change direction and get out of the limiting, and, indeed, stifling habits of my safe little job and explore greater possibilities. I certainly will have a lot of time to go on semi-countryside walks around Shanghai and write, write, write. I have more book projects than what I know what to do with. Cracking China, my memoir, is due out in a few weeks in South Africa. So now I feel excited. Still a little despondent, fearful and cheesed off, but excited. A larger size parachute would be nicer, though.

In fact, writing this and sharing it with you, made me move a bit closer to “yes” on all those three questions of Deepak’s. This is because the act of writing and exploring my “retrenched” experience made me go back to my school and just teach the kids for the kids’ sake, not for the sake of my job. What also helped was just getting out the home and briskly walking the thirty-five minutes it takes me to get to school, picking up for breakfast a yummy traditional Chinese jidanbing, take-away “egg-cake”, usually with chives and garlic. Literally padkos, hey? Physical activity is so important in times like this, such as being jobless, reminding one of those who cannot even get out of their beds or wheelchairs.

Please share your experiences.