Put Your Big Girl Panties On

Shortly after leaving the service in 1978, I joined a utilities PR firm in New York City that specialized in researching anti-nuclear activist groups. I headed that activity. That was right around April of 1978. TMI happened right about then- and for those of us old enough to remember, back then, TMI meant Three Mile Island, a nuclear meltdown. Funding for my national project promptly died, I was out of work. Jobless.

I moved out to Denver where my family then resided. I was a disabled, female veteran, a three-fer in the defense aerospace industry, and had little trouble scoring a job with Rockwell International . My skill sets were as a writer, journalist, speaker, public relations, community affairs. I got spirited away from Rockwell to then Martin Marietta to work on solar energy legislative work. This was in the early years of the Reagan Administration when all things alternative energy were under fire. Dying. When Martin Marietta experienced an unfriendly takeover attempt, I lost my job along with thousands of others. Jobless,1983.

After an adventure hiatus in Australia, New Zealand and Fiji where I honed my speaking skills while also becoming a scuba diver and a pilot, I returned to Colorado during a recession in 1987. Jobs were scarce, but I found one as a regional sales trainer for an electronics retailer called Silo. Until folks like Best Buy ate their lunch and we all lost our jobs and I was let go again. Jobless, 1990.

I found another quality job as National Training Director for TeleCheck, which was then owned by McDonnell Douglas. Not a good fit. You can see what's coming. They divested, the move was to Houston, and I wasn't willing to live with humidity and bugs. Jobless, in 1992.

I launched my full time business training sales teams for the new satellite television industry, worked for the giants in that field, then my disabililty came back to bite me. I had to find a full time job because I had to have medical insurance.

I took a job as the head of sales training for a bank in North Carolina in 1996. It was a survival move. In every way it didn't work out. The bank was sold to BB&T seven months after I had moved across country, bought a house. Anyone with a salary over $25k was out. Jobless, 1997.

By the time I moved to Spokane to start all over again with an alcoholic husband, two dogs and a mountain of debt, a piece of land in Idaho that offered us hope, I still was determined. There was a comet in the sky. I sent out 400 resumes. No job. Within six months I was bankrupt and divorced.

I started a women's group, that was a huge success. Mainly because it was all about helping others. They turned around and helped me out too. I got back on my feet. I've been back on my feet ever since. (That story is featured in Networking Magic, Frishman & Lublin).

In 2000 I moved back to Colorado to deal with an aging mother, and a volatile, shifting, changing economy. The industry I have excelled in for the last fifteen years has been slashing funds for what I do. Training, speaking, consulting. You know what? Get over it. Move on. Recreate yourself. Exactly what I've been doing for years and years.

So when I hear coal miners and steel workers and others talk about what they're owed, guaranteed work, and guaranteed jobs, I am afraid I don't have a lot of empathy. In an article featured in TulsaWorld on January 26, 2017, Garrison Keillor rightly points out that industries die. Whether it was the Pullman union or those who bred horses who went out of business because of Henry Ford, it makes no difference. Ladies and gentlemen, grow up. Economics rule, that is how capitalism works. Nobody owed me a job, ever. We are an evolving economy and there is no way that president donnie can deliver to the 174,000 coal employees future employment when natural gas has fundamentally changed the industry. That train has left the station.

president donnie wrote checks that the economy cannot cash. And it is one of many hearbreaking lies. To say to the steel industry that he is going to force those building the pipeline to use American steel? Really? We don't make a lot of that stuff any more. Economics, folks. Besides, that's what dictators do. Last I figured, this was a democracy.

My beloved Uncle Bo said many years ago that he had the recipe for success. "Find a job and keep it for forty years," he preached. When I took my first, second and third jobs, threw my heart and soul into doing excellent work, got excellent ratings and made my bosses happy, I thought I was good to go for forty years. Until I got laid off. Again and again and again. Nothing personal. Just business. I never blamed a President or a party or anything else. I picked myself up, dusted off and kept right on going.

Those experiences made me resilient, smart, nimble, an intense survivor. They also help me have compassion for what it's like to lose a job. But I also have a little impatience for those who are so entrenched that they do not see how fast the economy has left them behind, and willfully do not jump on board what is coming. That's a death knell. It is an awful fact of life that communities die when their industries go overseas, are defunct. That's capitalism. It's also called life.

On the other hand, you may not even know how many old, abandoned US warehouses and factories are being repurposed, and in fact are in high demand, for new and exciting projects that are creating jobs (https://money.cnn.com/2016/03/08/smallbusiness/factories-plants-manufacturing/). It's not all doom and gloom. There's new life springing up everywhere. It just may not be where you are comfortable. Well hell, I wasn't comfortable when the rug got pulled out from under me, either.

This election cycle, fools got elected by fools who believed that they could get their careers back. Certain industries have simply died because they are no longer sustainable. Using the age old justification that "my daddy and my grand daddy and my grand grand daddy worked in the business" is hogwash. I empathize. Now get OVER yourself and move ON. At the age of 64 I've had to do it all over again. And you know what, it's actually one hell of a lot of fun by now. The first time you get shoved out of the nest it hurts. After a while, you grow wings. I like being in sky. The view is better than rolling in the mud with bitchers and complainers and whiners and people who focused on what they are owed.

Nobody owes you anything, folks.

Retraining is part of life. It's essential to relationships, businesses, companies, countries, ourselves. Like it or not, it's part of growing up.

Put Your Big Girl Panties On and Get Over It. Our immigrant ancestors carved a country and lives out of absolutely nothing. What we have is a comparative smorgasbord. president donnie's claim about fossil fuel jobs?

Here's a hint for ya: the fastest growing job in America: Wind turbine technician. There are four million jobs in the so-called alternative energy industry and growing fast. The 174,000 in coal? A drop in the coal bucket.

If your great great great grand pappy was alive, chances are he'd tell you to pay attention to - if you will pardon me - the winds of change.

Let's make our daddy/grand daddy/great grand daddy proud for a change.