The Lament of a Job Seeker

My job search experience in Addis Ababa was like navigating an infinitely large and pitch-dark room, searching for its exit. 

In fact, you don’t even know if the room is large because you can hardly see anything. It is very difficult to estimate the size of the room. All you know is you’ve been walking for months, but you still can’t grasp the size or shape of the room. Sometimes you feel like it is a small room, and you are just going in circles. Other times you feel like it is an endless hallway.

You can’t see, so you rely on what you feel with your hands. There are times where you “feel” something that is shaped like a door. You smile, “This is it!” Wrong! It’s a trick. You try to open the “door” but it does not open. Worse yet, some of those door-like shapes don’t have a handle. You can’t even try to open them.

Oh, and the room also has PA devices through which people can speak to you. They can be relatives, acquaintances, or just random people who fancy themselves, career advisers - certified or not. These voices keep telling you to try this, that, or the other door. Yet, when you follow their directions, you either end up hitting a wall or running into one of those trick doors.

Seriously, I can expand this metaphor into a book, but I will stop here hoping that you got the point. Job search in Addis is not fun. 

No, I did not give up. I couldn’t afford to. While I looked for that perfect job that does not exist, I started writing. I used writing to alleviate my boredom and do something exciting and useful. 

Writing was like a window I had carved out in the dark “job-search” room I was stuck in at the time. Through this “window”, I could “breathe” and keep my inner fire burning. I used to think to myself, “And who knows? Maybe the light through this ‘window’ can show me to the ‘exit’ I am searching for.”

Why am I telling you all of this? In case, you, my dear reader, are currently stuck in the dark “job-search” space, I wanted to suggest you carve out your own “window” until you find that “exit”. Find and do something that is exciting for you and beneficial for others. 

Caution: make sure it does not cost you too much money. Because, you know ...