Flickers
It’s Thursday morning, and I’ve already cried twice this week about the job search.
Not because I’m unqualified.
Not because I’m lazy.
Because I’m exhausted.
Fifteen months into this search, the silence has become its own kind of grief.
I wake up every day wondering if the career I spent decades building even counts anymore.
There was a time when updating my LinkedIn triggered a flurry of recruiter calls.
There was a time when a human actually reading my resume wasn’t remarkable — it was expected.
That’s not reality anymore.
Now? Every email, every call, every—oh my god—interview feels like a flicker of hope.
Not because they’re exciting. Because they’re rare.
Recently, a hiring manager actually read my resume.
Not just skimmed it for keywords — read my story.
They saw the breadth and depth of what I’ve built. They saw me in their role. They saw how I could be more than they thought they needed.
And for a moment, it felt good to be seen.
That shouldn’t feel extraordinary. It shouldn’t make me feel grateful.
But today? It does.
Because being treated like a human instead of a keyword match feels rare.
That flicker didn’t lead to a job.
The role disappeared, like so many do these days.
That’s another story for another day.
This is about how much hope we pour into tiny flickers — because some days, that’s all we have.
Every flicker — every email, every call, every interview — shines brighter than it would have in the past. Every one carries the hope that it might grow into a flame — the one that leads me out of this hole.
The flame that brings the security of a paycheck.
The belonging of a team.
The self-esteem of knowing I still have a career.
And when those flickers don’t catch fire? It hits hard.
That’s where I am today:
Crying after school drop-off.
Crawling back into bed because I’m too tired to fake optimism.
This is what job searching looks like now.
It’s not a pipeline — it’s a rollercoaster, lurching between silence, flickers of hope, and doors that close before you can even step through them.
I don’t have answers today.
But if you’re out there, wondering if you still matter — I see you.
And we are not invisible. Not yet.