How to Cope when Life Feels Hopeless

Well, one friend had a bit of a suicidal moment a few weeks ago, many have been laid off or furloughed and many, like myself now, have had pay cuts. Strangely I don't personally know anyone that has the Covid-19 coronavirus, but friends of friends do, and even some people that have some say over me financially.  So I was asked not long ago how do I cope, how have I coped with difficult times. Let me tell you, my life hasn't been all roses, but I have lots of strategies, although not all are available to everyone.

• Take a walk. It's simple and even in this pandemic you can probably find a place to do it while avoiding other people. I recommend finding the most expensive neighborhood you can around you and walking around their streets or sidewalks. The houses are usually so spaced out, and police often cruise through those neighborhoods that you're likely to be alone.
• Go for a run or a bicycle ride. When I hit the lowest point in October 2010, living in my parents basement, on a $500 a month bail out fund, massively in debt, exercise was one of the main ways that I kept myself motivated. It paid off as I had a good spring racing season in 2011.
• Talk about it with someone. I currently am seeing a therapist weekly for video chats. Also, family and friends works too. It's nice to articulate your particular stresses with others, misery loves company, and no one is alone in this.
• Don't talk about it. To be honest, sometimes you just won't want to talk about it or think about it, and that's okay too. Moderation is good.
• Play some video games. I have an old Play Station 1 from like 1996, I won it in a contest and I didn't even know what it was at the time. In the fall of 2010 I spent dozens of hours playing Command and Conquer. In the winter of 2010 when I lived with some friends I played Call of Duty and Forza while my three roommates worked and after I had applied for all of the new jobs every morning.
• Watch some movies. For me Forrest Gump is my go to cry movie, and sometimes you just need a good cry. Or maybe Star Wars or Indian Jones or Back to the Future are the kind of out there adventures you need to transport you away from not knowing if you will be able to pay all of your bills in June. 
• Apply for a job. When I was unemployed, simply applying for a job, any job, gave me a little boost of energy that maybe this would be the one. Maybe this would be what got me back on my feet financially, and give me a purpose. 
• Read about the Great Depression or the Plague in the 1300s or other terrible historical event. For all of those difficult times, your ancestors survived and you are here now. Both Kohler and Railway Motors during the Great Depression had so little work but such commitment to their employees that they reduced the assembly line workers down to one day a week, that's a 80% pay cut from working a standard five days a week, let alone overtime on weekends. Yet, for many people or families that might be enough to keep a roof over their heads or some food on the table. Speaking for myself, I could survive on an 80% pay cut. I'd definitely need to find a cheaper place to live, and cut out lots of spending and saving, but it's possible. I just ran the numbers, I could take about a 50% pay cut and still live where I live. But when you think about a 50% pay cut, you can save a lot of jobs with that kind of drastic cut. Plus, some people might go find work elsewhere to return to their normal salaries, which further reduces a company's expenses.
• Save money like next month you will end up out of work for a year. If you haven't been doing this the last ten years then you kind of missed the boat, but assuming you survive the pandemic, you'll get another shot at it. For myself, the last nine years I've saved a lot of money. Not as much as I could have, because I went to Mt. Everest twice, just bought a BMW, have gone skiing plenty, have a carbon fiber road bicycle, and spent plenty on smaller climbing trips. However, as I wrote in my recent Emergency Fund (Advanced Edition) I've been building up little pockets of financial resources for the scenario that I get laid off next week, every week for the last nine years. I think this whole pandemic is going to drive my generation to try and achieve financial independence even faster than the Great Recession did. I'm definitely not financially independent, but I'm in such a strong position compared to 2010 that if my life would revert to 2010, things got really bad in this country.
• Get a $4 coffee. For me coffee shops are one of the luxuries in my life. It used to be going to the coffee shop and doing something on my laptop for an hour or two, but now it's just to pick up the coffee (and maybe sit in one of the outside chairs actually). This process or act did a number of things for me. It tastes good! And it costs a fraction of the cost of going to a fancy restaurant. It gave me a place to blog or apply for jobs, where as sometimes at home I can get distracted by TV or movies. Paying that little bit of money helps me feel like a contributing member of society. I'm helping keep that barista employed. Finally it's a little routine out of the house. When I was unemployed, just like during stay at home orders in this pandemic, I had nowhere to go, and going out for a $4 coffee gave me a little place to go that I could mostly afford. 
• Work on a side project. You know what I'm talking about, that business idea that will probably never go anywhere, or that home improvement project or car repair you've been delaying. It will give you something productive to work on, and you'll feel better about making progress after it's done. In fact, I was doing a little mentoring, and Janzen Gear might not be dead after all...

Okay, that's all I have for today, I'm going to go bicycle a bit.

Financial Independence and the 2019 Government Shutdown

Financial independence is the concept that if you save up enough money, usually 25 times your annual spending (300 times your monthly spending) and you should be good (about a 97% chance of success) to live off your investments (stocks, bonds, real estate, etc.) indefinitely. I'm working toward that goal, not so that I can quit working, but so that I can pursue the most meaningful work I am skilled at, regardless of the pay or security. Quick tangent, when you read about needing to have 10-11 times your expenses saved at retirement that estimate is based on you spending 70-80% of what you did preretirement and collecting social security, and retiring in your mid to late 60s.

With 800,000 direct government workers, and a large number of contractors out of work, and not receiving a pay check on January 11th, the stories in the news are starting to pile up of people not able to pay their bills, from missing one pay check. It makes me sad. I can also related because in 2010, I went pretty low financially. Fortunately my family more or less bailed me out, or rather threw me a life vest so I stayed afloat. Even considering my frugality since then, if my startup went under and I was not paid any more, I would only last a few months before I would have to start selling stocks and withdrawing from my retirement funds, especially considering I've been spending a lot more money living here in Colorado than I did in Iowa or Kansas.

In short, now is the time to think about your financial future. Layoffs happen all the time, SpaceX just announced they are laying off 10% of the company despite continually growing, General Motors is laying off thousands of people despite large sales numbers the last few years. The economy is really good now, so it's not a bad time to be laid off, but then again, there is never a good time. Suicides are guaranteed to increase due to these things like layoffs and the government shutdown. They won't be in the news because they happen one at a time, and there are often other contributing factors, like a broken relationship, but money often plays a role. Point being, for my peer readers around 30 years old, now is a great time to put a little money away for a rainy day. What if this shutdown plunges us into a recession, and you get laid off? Interest rates are a quarter point away from being a very inverted yield curve, which signals recession.

As a disclaimer, I realize that I'm a single 32 year old white male who works in technology and makes more money than most, and saving some money is easier for me than a 35 year old single mother who is a high school teacher. In other words, if you are saving say 10% of your income in a retirement account, and then living pay check to pay check, you're actually saving somewhat more money than most, and technically, "saving" money in social security with every pay check too. In other words, saving $1,000 in a savings account can go a long way, yet I understand for many people how difficult that actually is. My favorite charity, Give Directly, gives people in Kenya $22 a month, and it changes their lives. Many of those people will never have $1,000.

Psycology of a Third Job

In my widely publicized plunge into my winery job, I now have three jobs, and five sources of income. This new job has come with a fear...

First of all, I have my day time job. Economically it’s number 1. I'm an engineer. I have been since middle school trying to make camping stoves and rockets in my basement. When it comes to priorities about where to spend my time, I spend three to four times as much time engineering as exercising. I spend about as much time during the week engineering as I do sleeping, and I sleep a lot. In short, I am incredibly fortunate to be blessed in the situation I have.

Second, I have my coaching job. It's scant on income, but half of minimum wage is worth it to me get the physical and social experience and develop as a coach and communicator. It is an opportunity for me to teach and lead, and given that I am relatively new at it, a huge opportunity to learn.

Fourth I have my investments. I have a knack for losing money, but between dividends and cumulative sales I have ended the last two years, my only two investing year, positive. What do I do with "extra" money that I don't need to live? I invest it. It is possible that one day my investments will be my greatest source of income, although that thought too scares me for similar reasons to my third job fear.

Fifth, I have Squidoo, which surprisingly earned me close to two tanks of gas last year. No, it's not much, I blow that much money going out to eat on the weekends, but it is something.

Third, yes I put these out of order on purpose, I have my new winery job. It fulfills a social aspect that I had been lacking. I have a lot of fun out there! It does not feel like work. However, I do earn money out there. I am afraid that after my 57 weeks of unemployment and underemployment I have a fear of unemployment happening again, so I seek out income opportunities. I don't want to think of myself as that person who works all the time and never takes the time to relax a little and enjoy life, but at least a little, that is who I am.

I have had the discussion a few times about how people (specifically people I know or knew) reacted to the Great Depression. Almost all Great Depression survivors worked awfully hard economically. Some sought to escape the harsh memories through spending and extravagance and luxury, while others diverged into the image of visible states of poverty, with massive savings, fearing another collapse. It may be that those who were older pursued the image of visible poverty route while the slightly younger pursued the luxury route, although that is just conjecture. 

I always thought that I would get a new car right out of college. I still have not bought a car, more than three years after grad school ended. Now I have a third job. As I think about the future I wonder, 'how will my fear of another Great Recession impact my life? What impact will those 57 weeks have on me throughout my life and how will that that affect my relationships with others?' 

Unemployment to 6.5%

The Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said that yesterday that they will keep interest rates low until unemployment is 6.5% or below and inflation remains below 2.5%. Why does this matter?

First, the Fed does not clearly state what they will do or for how long or until what numbers. I like the increased transparency. It clearly shows in terms we (non-professional economists) can understand. In other words, the people printing money are telling us how cheap that money is, right now it's basically face value, and how long it will stay that cheap. When interest rates go up money gets more expensive.

Second, if you are in the market for a house, prices probably won't rise much until unemployment busts through 6.5%. Okay, maybe I'm the only person reading this blog interested in buying a house. The same stands for buying just about anything else. Car loans will stay cheap. Student loans hopefully should stay cheap but with some loans at 8% now that is not the case.

Third, it means that the US Congress has to do something. Although, maybe this whole debacle has come down to John Boehner and Barack Obama arguing ideologies out over the kitchen table. Great. People we elect to get stuff done, don't get much done. That's a good radio listen about the filibuster in the Senate. I had no idea...

Fourth, things are getting better! People will get jobs! We do have abundance in this country. It is easy to forget that. We have so much food and clothing and shelter. We are so fortunate. Just ask someone from Africa or Asia to describe the differences.

I Live in Iowa: Week 68

Short entry today. The last week I have put out some of my best articles so read up on them if you have not yet. They are interesting because they include graphics or videos, and those things are just a little more interesting than writing. In fact I endeavor to include more media in the future.

At work I worked. Some weeks include climactic fulfillments of big projects, other weeks include smaller projects or not as much clear progress. This was one of the later. In the long run all of this experience is serving me incredibly well. I am learning patience and communication skills and to discern what is important and what is not as important. I should say that any time that my attitude about work seems less than thrilling, it's like complaining about a B. Overall I am in a good situation, and that's why I am here.

Exercising I ran and bicycled, but I haven't filled out my running log for the week so I don't know how much I ran yet. I think it was probably in the high 20s. After a whopping 37 miles last week I decided to cool it and I ended up taking two day off of running, although one included a massage and the other a 42 mile bicycle ride so they were contributing to the big picture of training. No workouts this week because of my foot. My tendonitis was on the 3rd metatarsal between my second and third metatarsals. I not longer feel pain there, but I do feel soreness over my 1st metatarsal behind my big toe. This is a common problem in injuries. One area gets hurt and a fraction of a degree change in biomechanics leads to a surrounding area to hurt. So I am taking it easy on myself. It is not painful, but it is sore.

I went rock climbing twice, which is kind of high for me since I have officially become an engineer. We are preparing for a road trip to Devil's Tower. We are going to drive out, climb it, and more or less drive back. At least 26 hours of driving in one weekend. It's going to be fun!

The real highlight for the week was my parents coming to visit. They toured the northern east side of the west including Aberdeen, South Dakota, Williston, North Dakota, and Glacier National Park. The later by the way is eight years away from not having any permanent glaciers. The first two are towns suffering from an oil boom. When I say suffering I mean they don't have enough people to fill all of the jobs. Aberdeen apparently advertises 1000 job openings. So if you are still unemployed, and you aren't an engineer who would like to come to Iowa, go to the oil! They are hiring all types of positions and if you manage to have a college degree and stay for three months you will probably be making $23+ an hour. Now you know. What you do with that information is your choice.

My parents are so incredibly awesome! Somehow or other they did really well with my sister and I. The older I am the more I enjoy spending time with them and talking to them. They end up being my main source to complain to. It was great to have them in town, and yet another reason I need to buy a two bedroom (or more) house so that guests can stay with me.

Quarterly Financial Results

Hewlett-Packard is laying off 27,000 people. They are doing this because their revenue and profits are down. This is coming up now because their most recent quarterly results were released recently. One requirement for publicly traded companies is that they have to report their results four times per year. Every time they report results the owners (stock holders) will hope that the company makes a little bit more money than they did at the same time last year. If the company is not doing well the investors will request action. If a lack of performance continues the investors will demand action. In part this happens by the share price dropping as people sell their shares, in other words, a measure of the value of a company decreases.

While this strikes me as somewhat successful system of establishing value, it also strikes me as an incomplete picture of the health of a company. Employees work on projects from the daily duties to the multiyear projects with value not actually generated through sales until years later. As I am one of those who typically works on projects years before value is typically realized it troubles me to hear about a company responding to poor quarterly results through massive layoffs. It is yet another reminder how fragile our personal "stability" really is.

This World Keeps Changing

This was an interesting week. On October 5th Steve Jobs died. I know he had survived pancreatic cancer and a liver transplant, but it just seemed like he wouldn't die, at least anytime soon. People are beginning to wonder about the possible demise of Apple. I think that they put so much work into defining what made Jobs so distinctive that for the next several years, probably the next decade, they have nothing to worry about. Secondly, I can't help but think of the movie Tron or Batman how the son inherits the company. Who knows what the future will hold?

The iPhone 4S came out. It's cool because it has HSPA+ (3x faster data speeds), a better processor (up to 7X faster graphics), an amazing camera, up to 64GB of storage, and to top it all off it has this new thing called Siri which people don't really know what to do with yet.

Unemployment is still high, yet we can not find engineers! There are three open positions in our group for finite element structural analysis engineers for people with 1+ year experience and a salary of $70K+ that have been on the website for a month yet only 12 people have applied, and one is me and one is my coworker who sits behind me and we are just looking for a promotion.

Secondly, I hear about the booming oil and gas fracking industry throughout the midwest and tales of 2% unemployment where someone can find a job they day they arrive in town. Do you really want a job? Go to North Dakota.

On the European economic front they are having problems. We spent so much money, for so long that now it is time to pay it back. Let me tell you from experience it is fun getting into debt, but paying your way out of it is not easy. I am making more money now than I ever have but my standard of living is barely higher than it was in college. I sleep on an air mattress! (It is a double tall queen size.)

This is such an interesting time to be alive! I will be able to say that I watched the world go from no cell phones or Internet to ubiquitous cell phones with the Internet. We went from some of the greatest peace and prosperity to a 10 year old war and a long running recession and very slow recovery.

By the way, stocks on Wall Street have been up and down huge percentages recently (10% per day in some cases) and the more volatile stocks are in general the more money those in the market stand to make. If for no other reason that people are buying and selling and Fidelity, among others, is making a commission on each transaction. In other words, billionaires get richer and unemployed people in their 40s and 50s still can't find jobs.

Here come More Layoffs

With the new legislation to cut spending rest assured that the government will be laying more people off. Many in the media (NPR) are saying that this most recent bill does not go far enough to pay off debt and reduce the future deficit. In fact, I read on NPR's iPhone app that one of China's major credit rating agency recently down graded the US to A from A+. That sounds good but it is a number of steps down from the AAA rating that all of the US rating agencies are giving the US. What is significant is that China owns something like 1.2 trillion of the US debt, so we might care what their rating agencies think if we care what our rating agencies think. Also, remember that US rating agencies gave subprime CDOs Investment grade ratings (A or higher) even after the bottom fell out. In other words, they screwed up in 2008, they could be doing it again.

Being unemployed was terrible. I felt as though no one would give me a chance. With the government set to cut more spending more people will be out of jobs. This means the government will not collect as much income tax or sales tax because unemployed people do not spend as much money.

It is so sad for me to read about this and listen to it. I don't understand why we cannot raise taxes. It seems to me that with 100 millions workers at an average salary of $50,000 a 1% tax increase across the board could fund 1 million jobs. I will take a 10% tax increase if it means 10 million people will be gainfully employed by the government clearing beetle kill or repairing roads or getting kids involved in positive programs.

I still think we need to cut spending but I don't think congress should be the ones to determine how it gets done. They don't know how any of the money gets spent. Perhaps we should ask the various departments to cut spending by a target amount without layoffs and see what they come up with. It worked in one medium size California city that was featured on NPR.

There are tens of millions of households with larger incomes than me, and I understand they have kids and other expenses I do not have, but they are getting so much money it makes sense to tax them (and me) more. I am in favor of some sort of equality among people because inequality breeds violence, and the thought of that terrifies me. I have been reading about the Rwanda genocide. What makes Rwanda so different than the United States? Sure there was a decades long process that led to those weeks of violence and there is a slew of cultural differences specifically relating to growing up in poverty, but they are humans just like us.

I learned last week that 1 million high school students drop out every year. They will surely be the first to be unemployed. It is all so sad. I am not sure why I read the news or study history. I feel like we (congress included) are just going to make similar mistakes to those made by others in the past and we expect different results. Perhaps there is a dumb.

Fixing the National Debt

Half a year ago when I started writing my unemployment book I looked into the national debt so that I could include several pages about it in my book. With the current battle in Washington I have to say it is no surprise we are where we are. Of everything I have listened to, seen, and read the most educational was a podcast segment of NPR Money. If you listen to one podcast this year, make it this one. The speaker/professor/author they have on is great! He is seriously the most educated person I have ever heard from on national debts.

While I highly recommend you listen to the podcast I'll summarize it using words they are too afraid to use in the show: the US is in a mess of trouble and there are going to be unhappy people for years and probably decades because of it. What demographic suffers more is left to be seen, but rest assured, there will be suffering. He gives several example including Romania in the 1980s and I think France in the early 1800s. I especially like how he refers to an event 200 years ago as if it is relevant and the hosts laugh. We like to think we are the smartest people that have ever existed and as soon as you think you are smart you are admitting that you are dumb. I despise the words smart and dumb for reasons too lengthy for this article. Suffice to say we are no greater than our ancestors although we have probably complicated things so it will take more of us to figure out how to fix things, job security for some I guess.

So in the interest of solving a problem I came up with my solution to the national debt:

1. Raise the debt ceiling. I don't care what the number is but give us one or two years to pass the bills necessary to make a permanent fix.

2. Raise taxes. How? Create another tax bracket for million or two million dollar earners and give then a higher tax rate yet. For the rest us raise the percentages, except for 10% earners because seriously those people have no money anyway.

3. Cut spending. This is the hard part because it will involve extremely detailed organization to do correctly otherwise we will end up with tens of thousands more lay off and the same inefficiencies. Possible areas for improvement: education because we spend more on students and score worse on tests than most of the rest of the developed world, military because we are overseas so much that it becomes a burden on Americans, and especially social security. The goverment needs to raise the minimum and maximum age limits in a hurry. People can start collecting when they are only what 62? That is ridiculous! I get beat on the bicycle every Wednesday by a 55 year old theology professor. I have trouble believing that in the younger 60s people are no longer physically or mentally capable of contributing. On the contrary, many of the best professors and one boss of mine were in that range and they were extremely good because they have a story and example for every situation. We young people are missing out on that experienced insight because people retire early. However, after all that I say I'll probably retire with my millions in my 50s as a hypocrite.

4. Put Americans back to work. How? For starters, log all the dead pine trees in Colorado and throughout the west, including Canada. We have something like more than 50 million acres of dead beetle kill trees waiting to burn and cost us hundreds of millions of dollars. Or we could be proactive and cut them down because the wood is beautiful and we will save millions of acres of topsoil and tens of thousands of homes from destruction. Plus, logger jobs can employ the less educated, who are hurt more by the recession than most. How else to employ Americans? Agriculture is key. The US has much of the best farm land in the world. We will probably never have to worry about food the way than Somolia and Rwanda have. I also think we should raise the price of food but that's a more lengthy topic. A third way to put Americans to work is offer them jobs at minimum wage instead of outsourcing factories to Asia.

So those are my thoughts in a nutshell. I don't have many answers so please leave a comment below if you have a better idea.

Unemployment Is Going Nowhere

The unemployment numbers were once again released. We in the US are still sitting at 9%. The stimulus, didn't really work. The recession hit in 2008, three years ago, and times are still tough for millions of people.

I never paid attention to the monthly unemployment figures until I was unemployed for a month. I have learned so much since I began paying attention. First of all, the way they measure unemployment is basically people collecting unemployment checks. Ignored in these figures are stay at home parents, students, forced into early retirement people, and people who have been unemployed so long they are discouraged. The last group is an ever growing group might I add. Secondly, the figures are "seasonally adjusted" which basically means a portion of the population only works part of the year so it does not matter that the are unemployed.

The good news is I have a 55,000 word book that could help some of these people, but the bad news is it sits saved in three locations and not at a publishing house or book store.

My friends, be thankful for your prosperity because among us in this country many people have a very hard life.

The Power of One

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead

I am a firm believer in the power of one. Making one thing so important that it is the basis for thousands of hours of your time, perhaps even your entire life. Many people have trouble being that committed to something. It makes people nervous when a person is so incredibly committed to something that seemingly no obstacle will get in the way.

Now that I am sitting down to write this I feel that it can all be said in one paragraph. I have spent hours thinking about this while I was running, but there is really not much to say. When you can say, "that one thing is the most important to me" it will blow people away. In the 2008 presidential election I had a moment like that. I was discussing the upcoming election with my friends and I mentioned that one particular issue was so important to me that despite one candidate doing everything else well I could not vote for him. My friends were all a little shocked to see that one issue, and a relatively minor issue by political standards, was so important to me.

My running career is along the same lines. I get great joy from it continuously, but the goal is really one race. A race that would probably go unnoticed, even by the running community. It is the same for mountain climbing. I have been after Mt. Everest for years now, and when I do get up it my name will be just one in a list of other names. Yet, when nonclimbers learn of my passion I can tell that they do not know what to make of it. Only a few thousand people in the world are in a similar position to myself regarding Everest.

Finally, when I tell people my career goals, I can tell that they do not know what to make of it. No one has ever done the thing I want to do. Yet I say it and lay it out there as if it will be as simple as a two hour long car drive.

Unemployment, was a huge help to me, because it required that I re-prioritize my life. Not much at the top really changed, but things that were further down on the list, fell off the list. Would you prefer to get second place ten times or first place once? For me it depends on the competition, but to know that I pushed myself to the very peak of what I could accomplish mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually is more rewarding than leaving something in the tank and wondering if I might have done it had I tried harder. One thing, above all the distractions. It is going to happen.

Economics Week: Unemployment and Economic Recovery 2009-Present

In the book I am writing, I address the issue of where have all the jobs gone? As well as where will there be jobs in the United States in the future? The answers are not particularly complicated, but they are also not particularly easy to swallow.

First, a simple observation that has huge implications. With advances in technology less people are needed to produce the same amount of product or provide the same amount of service. Although technology thus far has not accelerated the ability to reduce staff in the service industry nearly as fast as in the product industry. In other words, working at Target, McDonalds or Starbucks is a more stable long term career choice than working in the manufacturing industry for Ford or Catepillar despite less than half of the starting pay, based on the past several decades in the United States. Of course, that is my opinion and it is based on non-management, non-salaried, hourly wage employees. If you have a education, such as engineering, manufacturing on the other hand provides far greater opportunities for job security. Lest anyone get an ego too inflated, no job is secure. Even Tiger Woods the first athlete billionaire is certainly not making as much money post-scandal as he once was.

What does the above paragraph mean? It means that working at American Eagle folding clothes and selling me jeans is likely more stable than painting car panels at Pontiac, wait Chrysler, wait... Toyota is still around I think. In the service industry (like at a nursing home, mortuary, Starbucks, or American Eagle) you are less likely to be susceptible to mechanization and automation that is taking over everything from farming to manufacturing, and soon enough, driving.

In other words, if 20% of the workforce is laid-off because of advances in manufacturing technology and outsourcing, consumer spending might only decrease 12% because those people who are laid-off will receive unemployment benefits. Additionally, it is possible that those left working will receive raises and spend more money. (I only have one example to prove that statement and it involves manual labor and working more hours. Not the ideal situation for the population as a whole.)

Second, lay-offs typically have a slightly positive affect. Despite our capitalist society, we typically pay people based on their initial formal education and their years of experience with less regard given to performance. Due to a variety of factors some employees are not as profitable to the company as others. Some are possibly even unprofitable. Lay-offs are a way to reduce the number of under-performers. That being said I do not blame the laid-off at all.  I would imagine if given the chance to work for 2/3 of the money or even half of the money to keep their jobs, most would gladly accept rather than be unemployed for several years. It is not an employee's fault that he or she was gradually paid more every year at a faster rate than that particular employee's productivity increased.

Additionally, some people are in the wrong industry. Plain and simple I've met a number of them doing something because they have a degree or the money is good that they are really not cut out for. I do not know, but I feel if this type of person was laid-off hopefully they would find more suitable employment.

Third, after lay-offs and after automation the people that you are left with are the high performers. When given the chance to work 60 hours instead of 40 they jump at the opportunity. These people might fall into the work-work-life-work balance but that is what the US economy typically rewards. That is actually a subject that I take great pains in my book to deal with, because work is one small aspect of our lives. We need to value more than work and our jobs. Easy to say, but it took me months of anguish to really understand that.

Currently, many companies are offering their employees overtime instead of hiring new employees despite business drastically picking up within the last year. The theory is that employees cost money for health insurance and training and other expenses while simply giving employees overtime reduces the training, healthcare, hiring process, 401K and other expenses that employers have to pay. All of this means...

Fourth, employers have a greater choice of employees and are able to pay less and not give out benefits to find people. One person I know referred to the new trend in lower wages and no benefits as "indentured servitude". I would probably not go that far because working 65 hours a week still leaves over 100 hours a week to do whatever. The point being my first three jobs after college did not include any kind of health insurance, vacation, sick days, or retirement planning.

It is more competitive now to get any job than it was pre-2008 and to be honest I do not see that trend changing much for several years. To those of you currently racking up college debt, stick with it even though you are going to fight for lower wages. With a degree you will probably still make more money, and hopefully enjoy a job that does not degrade your health. The road ahead is hard, but you can make it. If the basket case of pent of emotions and egotistical grandeur that is me made it than you can certainly make it. Plus I'm writing a book that will hopefully help you.

Fifth, and finally, it is to everyone's advantage that you succeed in life. While the multimillionaires on Wall Street will be selling short (making money on stock that goes down in price) on your 401K as your 401K gets cut in half they still need you, otherwise they are out of a job. They need your commissions. If Warren Buffett did not have thousands of people working in companies that he owned, he would not have as much money as he does. If you did not buy Microsoft products Bill Gates would not have the fortune that he does.

Every society in history that has created a lop sided wealth structure has eventually gone through a revolution to change that. France in the 1790s, Russia in 1917, and it appears most of the Middle East in 2011 are a few of the rather significant ones. The point being, it is in everyone's best interest if everyone is making some money. Of course the opportunity to make more money typically encourages people to work harder. That is where capitalism works.

The point is, you can make it. You will get a job and it will be good. It may take far longer than you would like, but it will happen. It is in everyone's best interest that you succeed. Wether anyone admits it or not your success will help everyone from the places you spend your money to your employer who you make money for. The economy will recovery, but it will be different.

The Fear of Unemployment

The first chapter in my new book is titled: "Unemployment Is Good". I realize that might be debatable to many people, but I believe it. A little bit of unemployment can go a long way toward changing a person. Unemployment made an impression on me that no other lesson or life experience ever has. Now that I am getting paid I appreciate the money so much more. There are other reasons unemployment is good which I won't cover in this post. They will all be in my book!

Since getting my paychecks I have been putting away half of my pretax and other fees income. In other words, somewhere around 2/3 of my actual paycheck has gone to my savings account. It is building rather rapidly. While there is a temptation to spend some money and buy something like a motorcycle, the truth is I am afraid of being unemployed again. That fear is still so strong that I have not bought anything over $100 since being employed for over two months. No 15 year old Laphroig, no new computer, no new cell phone, no new car, no new flat screen, no new iPad 2, or even a set of ice tools. All of the things a year and a half ago I planned to buy once I had a job seem immaterial now. I hope to just be able to pay my bills for the next year.

The fear of unemployment drives my purchases. The fear of unemployment drives my savings account up. I feel that I am taking a much more active role in lowering my expenses and raising my income than I did before I was unemployed. Although, Janzen Gear has not sold anything yet and my Amazon sales are one total sale for a commission to me of somewhat less than $0.50.

One of the benefits of this blog is that a number of times my friends have said something like, "Isaiah, I read your blog and... it's depressing sometimes." They are of course referring to my unemployment posts. While I hope that the general attitude here is far more positive now, I am happy to know that my experience can vicariously teach others who are still in school. I had no idea that I could possibly be unemployed. WPI is too good for that! Yet it happened. Now I know that it can happen to just about anyone. You are not protected entirely by the name of your school or your GPA or your patents or your software expertise.

While I fear future unemployment and I diligently plan for it, I do not worry. Whatever happens will happen. I am working now and will be for some time. With quite a bit of help from those who care about me I made it through unemployment once, I will be able to do it again, if I must.

The Life of a Contract Engineer: Week 8

This week, like most weeks, had it's ups and down. Monday around 1:30 PM was a rather significant down. I learned that the person who I am currently replacing is coming back ahead of schedule. When I originally was informed about this position in December the chances of the person coming back were dubious. Fortunately, he will be returning to work and whatever issue that he may have had is clearing up. That being said. My time is limited. He returns Thursday March 31st and there will be "several" weeks of overlap when we are both working there, but the insinuation is that I have more job hunting to do. I'll get back to that.

After a rather unproductive Monday afternoon wallowing in depression I rallied to have a very productive week. In fact Thursday from 4PM to 5PM I had my most productive hour of work yet. I received a modified CAD model of a support beam that I had been working with over the last two weeks and in that one hour I imported it to ANSYS, created all of the connections between the 19 parts, applied the forces and boundary conditions, meshed the part, and ran the simulation. I was so on the ball that as I was clicking things I vividly remember having to wait for the computer to process that action before I could make the next click with my mouse. My mind was moving as fast as it ever has. Considering that I was going head to head with a 3.7 GHz quad core computer with 20GB of RAM, I'm pretty excited. There was a lot of background experience to get me to the point where I knew what to click in what order, but still my mind was just flying. At this point in my life I would consider that a 100+ dollar per hour work effectiveness. Probably more like 200+.

Friday, I did not go into work. Instead I went to an interview at John Deere in Dubuque, Iowa. They are looking for people like me and I happen to have spent most of my life around rural locations where machinery is common. I've done my share of manual labor and operating large equipment so I think I'm a good fit for the job. But after five on-site interviews and only one job offer, who knows what a feeling is worth.

As far as tackling unemployment possibly again. I am far more prepared this time. I have Janzen Gear and my book in reserve. Plus I have been saving about 50% of my pretax income in my saving account so that I can hopefully pay bills on my own for a few months in case I spend a few more months unemployed. Additionally, I'm in a better mental state now than I really have ever been. Read the last paragraph of today's post to better understand what I mean.

In investing news, I'm really getting into the stock market thing. There is just so much money to be made with the right strategy and research that to ignore that kind of opportunity I feel is ignorant. I didn't buy any stock this week. In fact I haven't for the last month. I'm saving up for the first quarter statements to come up because it seems that there is generally a 1-2 month uptick on stocks with the best quarterly earning statements. Seeing as how I don't know which stocks are among the best right now, I'm waiting until some numbers come in. Additionally, there is a company that I am interested in investing in but they recently filed a document with the SEC when I feel the need to read before I invest.

In Janzen Gear news I'm waiting on the manufacturer to finish the boards. Lead times even in a little shop two miles away from my house can be rather long. That's a good thing to learn now when I am young.

In running news I ran 84 miles including a nice 9.7 mile tempo at 5:59 pace. I had two runs in the 6:30 pace range for a total of 22 miles and a 15 mile long run. I was aiming for higher mileage but I'll take the quality running any day over extra miles. My hip is coming around really well. For the upcoming week I was aiming for 100 miles, but I think 90 would still be nice. More importantly I want to get in two tempos one at half marathon pace and one a little slower than marathon pace. I'd also like to do some strides or short hills.

In writing mode, I passed 50,000 words on my manuscript! That's a huge milestone. After probably somewhere around 100 hours of plain writing, plus more than a year of unemployment and misemployment and countless hours of research and "testing", I'm at 108 pages of single spaced, 12 point, Times New Roman text. I'm probably 90-95% done with the actual writing. However I have to do some formatting and rearranging which I am maybe 20% done with. I also need to edit it extensively before I start showing it to people and realistically I'm less than 10% done with that. (As I read what I wrote weeks ago I often edit it that's why I've done any at all.) I have not queried any agents at all yet or set up any speaking engagements, but that is all part of the plan. This is very exciting for me because I feel this has the real potential to help other new graduates dealing with unemployment. I hope this book is a resource both from a physical point of view, such as giving direction about how to get a job, and the economic influences post-2008 that are creating the mildly unique employment/unemployment patterns. Aside from all of the technical aspects I devote much of the book to maintaining and creating a positive mental attitude. For me the most important lesson that unemployment taught me was a more appropriate value system. While the values at the high end of my priorities scale did not really change, the order of my priorities and my appreciation of those factors and relationships has greatly increased, even if I still rarely show my changed disposition. In other words, I became more comfortable in my own skin, because I made changes in my head. How do you change your thinking? That's a good question! Buy my book!

You Need a Job to Get a Job

I do not know if that saying is true, but I can attest that since becoming employed the few jobs I have inquired about were interested in me. Whether that is simply the right people looking at my credentials instead of the wrong people, I am not sure.

The idea behind needing a job to get a new job is that people who are employed are doing something right. Employed people are not crazy enough to be fired. Employed people are currently valuable to some company. Employed people, engineers and scientists in particular, are staying current with new developments in the field, which will allow them to make better products and cut costs. Employed people are not lazy. I have no idea if anyone actually things that last sentence, but I always had a hard time describing what I did while I was unemployed. I applied for jobs. That was kind of a big part of most of my days.

For people who have recently graduated into unemployment this is a catch-22. You need experience to get experience. On the upside, our time in life is the one thing that everyone shares. Billionaires aren't awarded more of it than poor people. Which is to say, all of life is an experience. Work experience may be valued by an employer more than unemployment experience, but they are not interchangeable. The experience I had unemployed will probably stay with me the rest of my life and help me far more in the future than one year of engineering. That being said, now I have a contract engineering job, so I hope that experience will help get me a long term job.

What and Who Conspired to Aquire Me a Job

This story starts with me, but most of it has nothing to do with me. So we begin...

1. There was a boy (yours truly, call me a man if you want but don't kid yourself). 
2. Boy worked moderately hard for years in school and out of school to be awesome. 
3. Boy finished all the formal school he aspired to as a 14 year old and tried to find a job.
4. Boy failed, about 400 times.
5. This particular boy had a father (aka dad) who was a social worker with a component of his job in public motivational and ethical speaking. 
6. One particular person, an engineering manager, who attended those motivational and ethical speeches noticed that the father had a son in engineering. Out of respect for the father he was interested in a short after work coffee meeting with the son about job opportunities at his place of employment.
7. The meeting took place in October and the engineer advised the boy to apply for one job in particular, because it would be a good fit.
8. The boy applied for said job.
9. The boy received a rejection email several days later that they were pursuing more qualified people. 
10. The boy forwarded the rejection email to the engineer with a sparse note about them finding someone more qualified.
11. Engineer was surprised.
12. In December an unexpected temporary position in Engineer's group opened up for a person with almost exactly the boy's skills. 
13. Without the boy applying, the engineer asks if the boy would like to come in for an interview. 
14. Desperate for a job he agrees.
15. In interview number one before the end of year most of the employees are gone so the interview is rather informal.
16. A second interview is scheduled with more people in attendance.
17. At the second formal interview the boy presents his thesis, is grilled about past experiences and how clean, or rather dirty, his room is. 
18. Several days later the engineering manager is still unsure of a decision and asks the boy to meet him at Starbucks at 7 AM ten miles from his house.
19. The boy agrees without hesitation.
20. At 7 AM meeting in a snow storm the two talk for over half an hour.
21. The boy leaves the meeting having no idea where he stands.
22. Several days later the engineer emails and calls the boy to offer him a job.
23. Boy accepts.

It's humbling. I thought that it wouldn't take this much effort to get a job, but I was wrong. I know that my experience is not typical for everyone, but it is the only situation that resulted, thus far, in a concrete job offer.

My First Day of Work

They wanted me to show up at 9:00 AM, so of course I woke up at 6:30. Paranoid that I wouldn't have time to run shower and eat breakfast and drive six minutes down the road motivated me to get going. I was ready to go by 8 AM so I spent time watching the news and I went out for a mocha. Then I finally drove to work and walked in the door 15 minutes early.

I had to sign a few forms and one particular form mentioned that if I had any previous inventions I should disclose them in an attachment. I didn't sign it immediately because I wanted to make sure I attached info about my patents. The person who was helping me didn't know what to do because that had never happened before. The other person in the office didn't know what to do either. Then their boss got involved and read the form to see what it really said. I suggested that simply attaching the second page of my resume would probably suffice since it listed my patent numbers. Yep, 15 minutes into my new job my ego was as inflated as ever.

Then I drove from the main location to the location I will be actually working at and I missed the highway interchange. I nearly had an emotional episode because at the rate they are paying me I don't want to waste a minute. I managed to finally get to work and start working on tutorials for the software that I will be using, ANSYS, which I have never used. At lunch I went out to my car to get my lunch and I took a few wrong turns and had to get directions on the way out. Then I was locked out because my security badge wasn't activated yet.

In the afternoon I started working on my first "project". It's pretty simple but I had a few issues, such as how to partition in ANSYS. So I was stressing myself out trying to be perfect. I did manage to do a few original finite element simulations, probably half a dozen different ones focusing on two different models. I didn't finish the project, which was upsetting while I was at work. However, as I thought about the day on my evening run I had to laugh. I created and ran a successful 3D heat transfer simulation with 45,000 nodes using software I had never touched until today. HA! I might just survive...

In other news my computer has a bunch of cores and 20GB of RAM. That's the difference between the Mercedes level computers I did my thesis on and the F-22 that I'm working on now. It's a whole other realm. I am totally going to do a 1,000,000 node simulation in the next few weeks! (If I can actually justify it.)

The feeling I had Monday of stress trying to finish everything immediately was unlike any other feeling I have ever had. In college when I had a lot of work to do I just worked 14 hours a day for a week or so. At work, no one really does that. Part of it is that I am terrified that I am gong to screw it up and get fired, which is a little ridiculous, yet it is what I felt Monday. I have not adjusted to working for eight hours and not doing homework yet. I feel lazy.

It's terribly exciting! I don't know what to make of it yet. I even ran about 13 miles over two runs Monday (the day after a 23 miler). It's everything I wanted at this point in my life, minus the mountains. I mean I met half a dozen awesome people over the weekend so my social situation is looking more interesting all the time. I don't know what to make of it.

It's Not Rocket Science: Week 42... THE END!!!

In the world of finding a job... I found one! Monday I was offered a job and Tuesday I accepted it. It is a contract position which for me means that I will only have work through the end of April. They could easily extend the contract or they could hire me as an actual employee. "They" by the way is Kohler Engines. Kohler is famous for bathroom fixtures, but also has a thriving division of several hundred perhaps even a thousand employees that build engines and generators. I will be doing finite element stress analysis for concerns like wind loading on engine covers and skid structural optimization.

The job is local so I will be living at home with my parents at least through April. I am not allowed to discuss "directly or indirectly" what my salary is, but I have a masters' degree in engineering and using Google you can figure out what that means. I also signed at least two different documents saying that I will not share proprietary information and that things I create while using company owned equipment or time is not mine. So I am not sure if I will be able to write any more finite element tutorials using screen shots from work (of course I would never write the actual tutorial on company time, but I would have to take the screen shots at work) but I will figure that out in due course. I am disappointed that what I create will not be owned, even in part, by me. That is going to warrant a blog post in the future.

57 weeks after graduating with my masters' degree I have an engineering job, and only temporary one at that. Wow, that is not how I expected things to happen. It still does not feel real yet. As I write this I haven't actually been to work yet. As you read it I will be at work (and you will probably be at work too, shame on you for not working). In part, until I get that first paycheck I probably won't feel like this is all actually happening.

I don't want to dwell on having an engineering job just yet. After all it is temporary and in May I could very well be out on the street again. I also haven't done anything yet. Finally, I will not place all of my self-esteem and value upon the fact that I have a job doing what I want to do. I learned through unemployment that I have to value things in my life like relationships, health, and my time, not just what I do for 1/4 of the hours every week.

Unemployment taught me that my life "situation" is a whole lot more fragile than I knew. Hopefully you never experience living on credit cards, and if I wasn't so proud perhaps I would never have experienced it either. For the next several months I expect to have more revelations about what unemployment meant to me. So stay tuned. I feel no one can ever fully appreciate a situation until after it is over. Only then can we view the event or events with more objective eyes.

I had a great week running! I ran three workouts plus a 20 miler. I ran a total of six miles faster than 5:10 per mile pace, which is more miles at that pace then I have ever run in one week before. As part of that I ran a 4:56 mile in practice and two 5:00 miles. A 4:56 is the fastest mile I have ever run in practice. I also ran a 6.6 mile tempo and did some strides which puts my quality at the end of the week near 13 miles, which is a much larger amount and percentage that it has been in months, perhaps even a year or more. My total for the week was 101 miles, my third consecutive week over 100 miles. Needless to say running is going very well. I hope, and I feel from fall of 2009 experience, that my running is going to continue to be on the up and up. A job adds stability and routine and I do well when I have a schedule to follow. Which is to say I feel my life is more productive when I have some demands on my time, up to a point. But I can't imagine how working 40 hours a week will demand much of my time. I've never had a job that is only 40 hours a week. School and Boy Scout Camp always seemed to be 60+ hours a week. Who knows, maybe my mileage will get up to the magical 130 miles a week? (I tired about a year ago and ran myself into the ground for a 127 mile week.)

I am also writing another book.  It is about new college graduates and trying to find a job in this economy. While we have officially recovered from the recession, we are having the worst recovery from a recession that I have ever head of. So many things are changing that many of the expectations that younger people have, or did have, are naive and unrealistic. For example, people are living longer and due to the recent economic problems many people close to retirement chose not to retire so that they could earn a little more money to ensure their lifestyle in retirement. Thus jobs are not opening up as quickly due to retirements. Another example is the growth of less developed countries and the relative economic stagnation of developed countries. We are not building and constructing like we have been the last 60 years. Almost everyone in the United States has a cell phone and a house and a car that they drive on paved roads. The markets for those things are pretty saturated compared to a place like China or India.

I am up to 13,000 words with no clear idea how big it is going to get. The goal for this book is to get it taken up by an agent who gets it taken up by a publisher who prints a few thousands copies. Hopefully that will means things like Barnes and Noble and fan mail from people who were helped from reading my book. It's not about the money because I just got a job! Also, if this book has any amount of success and I write a second book in the future I can likely expect a pay check from that. I would rather help 5,000 people than get a $5,000 check.

How is this book going to be different than just reading the last 57 weeks of my blog? First, it's going to be far more organized. Second, it's going to include information that is not on my blog such as research and examples of other people who have encountered unemployment after graduation. Third, I'm going to address the mental aspect in more detail that I typically do on my blog. For example, everyone who regularly reads my blog or knows me knows that I love to run. I'm really going to try and explain that because I feel it is a critical aspect of my mental health during my 57 weeks unemployed.

It's Not Rocket Science: Week 41

Well, I had an interview in Michigan at a aerospace company this week. Yes, I want the job, it was somewhat more interesting than I expected. My preconceptions of Michigan were not the most positive, but time and again everyone that I talked to gave me a different picture of life there. The job itself also seemed quite interesting. Unfortunately, since I've been away from engineering for longer than I ever expected I do not feel in a position to say that I like this or that better than something else. Who I am to be picky about my career? Perhaps I will get a job where the work is not as interesting as I hoped, but I expect it will take me months to figure that out, and I'll be so happy to have an engineering job that I really won't care for awhile that the work is not the most interesting to me.

In short, no job offers yet.

Running I had a great week. 101.7 miles, exactly the same to the tenth of a mile that I had the week before. I had a great 6300 meter tempo run in 21:12, which for me is exceptionally good. In fact I am pretty sure that is the best tempo I have ever had. It's still nearly 10 seconds per mile slower than I hope to run a marathon some day, but it is a step in the right direction. I also had a nice 21 mile long run which went quite well.

Other than that I spent time with family and friends, spent a little time painting, drank some coffee, and didn't get enough sleep.

Holding it Together Mentally

I just read an interview that I have read several times over the past few years. The original website it was on is no longer active, fortunately, it is reposted on a message board. The interview is with Italian athletics coach Renato Canova easily one of the best running coaches in the world. I even own his book on marathoning, which is a little complicated to order. I will get to why that is significant and relevant in a minute.

Tomorrow I have an interview at yet another company. Three interviews in eight days is at the limit of my imagination. In many respects it is a little frustrating. Each company requires specific, but similar to other companies, paperwork. Many of the questions are the same or very similar from interviewer to interviewer. Interviews are about communication between an employer and a prospective employee. Part of that process is honesty and consistency. I do not have a problem with honesty, but I fear that in the course of applications, questions, paperwork, emails, and non-verbal communication I might appear inconsistent in some manner which could lead to an interpretation of dishonestly. This frustrates me because I like to think of Isaiah Janzen as one person who is the same, or at least nearly the same, around everybody. (You will have a very tough time find anybody who has heard me swear.) So as I feel myself being picked apart, or my brain being picked, I worry that I will say something which will be misunderstood and lead to another rejection.

How do engineering interviews and an Italian coach interview relate to each other, specifically under the "Holding it Together Mentally" banner? Canova talks in the interview about one of his top athletes that does not like to take time off of running and instead enjoys hard training. The first time that my post season non-running lasted only a week was my sophomore year of high school after cross country season. In 2010 I ran at least a little in every week. Unemployment, and interviewing, is kind of like the off season in running. It involves waiting, anxiousness, doubt, and in the short term a step back instead of a step forward. As far as both a break from running and a break from engineering are concerned it is the most mentally challenging aspect of development in both areas. I think I have cried more in the last year than in the five years before when I was learning engineering constantly. Similarly, I once ran a mile and was in such great pain that I started crying and walked home because I knew I wouldn't be running for weeks.

However, and quite fortunately, I feel that breaks are very constructive for long term development. Breaks narrow the focus.  Breaks ask how bad you want it, which for me typically means either I work harder at it in the future, or I quit. (I have quit things like band, acting, baseball, and basketball because the truth was, I didn't want to excel at them enough to continue.)

So how do I hold it together five hours into an interview when the seventh person and eighth person of the day are asking questions similar to the ones that the first six people asked? I give the best answer I have and if possible, talk about a different situation from the situation I described when previous interviewers asked the similar question. In essence I try to give each of my eight or so interviewers for the day a different 40% of myself so that I end up giving my career, and life story, about two and a half times or so over the course of the day. (I totally just made those numbers up don't read too much into them. One interviewer could get 90% while another gets 10%. Part of it has to do with the depth that specific interviewers place on different aspects of my life.) The point is that I'm honest, I answer the questions, and over the course of the day I try to communicate everything I feel is important to multiple people. I figure the more examples I can give them from my past the better my chances of the person with authority to hire me liking one of those examples.

I will give a theoretical example to demonstrate what I mean. The theoretical question is, "tell about a time when you were working in a group and one member was not pulling his or her weight or causing trouble." Now imagine that I have three examples: One, Two, and Three. I think that One is the most pertinent or best example from my past to answer that question. I think that Two is the second best example and Three is an acceptable example but not the most clear. I will give example One to the most senior people who really have the ability to hire me, and example Two or Three if the question is worded differently or simply as another example when I was in a group setting with an under-performer. Now to me, example One is the best, but perhaps Two or Three is liked better by the hiring authority so it would be remiss for me to leave out those examples.

Finally, there is a chance that someday I will be working on a joint project with a company, and people, that I interviewed with but did not get a job with and knowing those few people for a few hours might possibly help me accomplish something.