work and defining oneself

i think a lot about words. and how the way they're (mis)used shapes the culture around us. as i've been working on my scandinavian welfare state book, i've encountered countless interesting linguistic turns of phrase. for example, it seems that we can no longer refer to our work as a job, it must be a career. every "course" designed to help the unemployed get back to work is called something with career - the career way, the career cannon, and the like. even if the job it leads to is cleaning hotel rooms or sitting at the cash register in a grocery store or stocking shelves in a warehouse. those are now careers. and i think it diminishes the word "career" to call every job by that name. because where does it leave us when we want to refer to work that requires years of education and work experience, built up over a long period? 

but the tendency to refer to all jobs as a career reveals something about the way culture views work. it's everything. it's THE defining feature of a person. when you meet someone new, one of the first questions is always, "what do you do?" and how they view you hinges on that question. we are our work in the eyes of others. which is why everyone needs a career and not just a job. because if i have just a job, then who am i?

i've been working very hard for several years now to NOT be my job. back when i was my job, i wasn't much of anything else. i certainly wasn't much of a mother or wife and i definitely wasn't creative or energetic, i barely remembered who i was. i was just a corporate drone, giving all of my energy to a company that ultimately didn't give a rats' ass. because companies don't care about anything. they can't. it's impossible. but in trying to be my job, i forgot who i really was. and i think that's happening to an awful lot of people.

ink spiller wrote yesterday about being a working woman and i think that's part of the problem. women came into the workplace on male presumptions, trying to fit into a male world, not accounting for their uniquely feminine strengths. however, i think it's only part of the picture, as i've seen female-dominated workplaces that are just as dysfunctional as male-dominated ones and frankly, i'd take the male-dominated kind any day (there's usually (but not always) less crying in meetings). 

i think we have to make it ok again for people to have jobs which provide them with an income, but which don't define them as humans. not every job has to be a career. sometimes it's ok to just have a job. because you find your self-definition elsewhere - in puttering around your garden, in making meaningful handmade gifts for people you love, in making dinner for your family, in daily writing or reading, in spending time with a horse, in laughing at the antics of the chickens (just to name the things i do). maybe you hunt or forage or go to taekwando or a knitting group. 

who we are is the big collection of all of the things we do. i write and i take pictures and i have begun to teach and i do research. but i also cook and plan parties and serve on boards and laugh and entertain and sew and learn new things. i am far too complex to boil it all down to one word that happens to have to do with where i work. and i suspect all of you are too. 

let's take back work. and take back ourselves in the process.

aging system fails to keep up with new economic reality

it's a very interesting experience, this being unemployed and encountering the social welfare system to which i've paid so dearly for so many years, both through my (rather alarmingly high) taxes and through an extra unemployment insurance called an A-kasse, through my union. although a job is on my immediate horizon, it won't start 'til april, so i need to enter the "dagpenge" or "day-money" system for a month. and in fact, having paid into the system for so long, i actually want to try it out, to see how it works.  it is an interesting, frustrating and yes, even infuriating experience. and a huge eye-opener into a system that has not kept up with the reality of those facing unemployment today.

in many ways, i think it's fair enough for there to be some oversight and monitoring of people who are, as the brits put it, on the dole. so a certain amount of paperwork is fair enough. it's also fair enough that you have to be actively seeking employment so that you can rejoin the ranks of taxpayer and not payee (tho' interestingly, you ARE taxed on the money you get from the government - that's a whole 'nother issue that i won't go into at the moment).

the first thing you are asked to do is enter your "CV" into an old-fashioned and cumbersome online system called the jobnet. i am, as you know, quite good at things internet and it still took me the better part of an hour to do this. there is one point where you should give a written description of your work life thus far and the skills and talents you have to offer to an employer. sort of like you do at the top of a normal CV - a profile of yourself. however, it is limited to 250 characters, so it's kind of like the twitter version of who you are and what you want. i found this quite limiting, i must say.

at the end, after you have entered all of this, the system helpfully suggests some jobs to you that are found in its database. for me, the system admitted that it didn't have anything that matched my profile, but suggested that i have a look at several jobs that were marked as "hot" with a little red chili pepper symbol. the "hot" jobs the system suggested i apply for included: telemarketer for a mobile phone company, helper in a nursing home and yes, you guessed it, cleaning staff in a hotel. at this point, i said, aloud, WTF?

apparently the system, which forces you to spend the best part of an hour entering a whole lot of information about your work experience and education, but will not allow you to actually upload your real CV, doesn't actually know what masters degrees and ph.d. programs and fulbright scholarships and elite american universities really are. is it really relevant for me to enter my real and true information into this system that is so clearly targeted at someone on a totally different plane(t) than i am?

i realize that this sounds rather arrogant and in a way, i don't mean it to, but in a way, i do. seriously? this system was clearly developed when denmark's unemployment was for all intents and purposes nul. so anyone who was on the job market was looking for telemarketing or a cleaning job. but now, the reality is something quite different--there is a job market full of highly-educated people with extensive work experience on the market. and the system hasn't changed to reflect this.

next week, i actually must attend a two-day course which will help me determine my "competence" and then write a CV. hello, people. i could TEACH that course. without preparing in advance.

i also have to log into this ridiculous jobnet on a weekly basis and apply for two jobs. two jobs that are apparently listed there in the jobnet. so they are actually FORCING me to apply for telemarketing and cleaning jobs in order to get grocery money for one month. it makes no difference whatsoever that i have a job lined up, nor does it matter that i've paid into the unemployment insurance scheme for ten years. if i want that one month of assistance, i have to jump their hoops, because they have made the hoops the same for all.

although it gave me a serious headache mid-afternoon when i was knee-deep in all of it, i am now more relaxed and ready to take it as the sociological experiment that it is for me. a test of the system, if you will. and i'm going to do quite a lot of writing (in my journal, don't worry, i won't subject you all to all of it) about the psychological effects of such a system. i have to admit that it already feels quite defeating and psychologically damaging to enter my experience and education and have the system suggest to me that i become a telemarketer. the implications on job seekers and society at large are potentially devastating.

i'll bet this isn't the only example of a system that's broken in the face of the new economic reality.