I'm having a glow up, but it sucks
(Edit: I read everything yall had to say and this convo has been more helpful and uplifting than any other conversation I’ve had about this. Thanks guys🥹)
After a bad break up, I moved back into my mom’s at 36 to focus on myself and get my shit teogether. I take better care of myself, and it really shows. I've lost weight and gained muscle. My skin looks better, my clothes fits better. My overall appearance overall has improved.
Now I'm 37. I'm hot now, but I am still unemployed, and still living at my mom’s. I get more attention when I'm outside, but at this low point of my life, attention is the last thing i want. Women are stopping me on the street just to talk. I'll be at the store and when I randomly look up, people are staring at me. I feel like a unicorn walking around.
It came to a head the other day when I went to a friend's event with his coworkers. As I go pay for my drink ticket, his boss goes “[Your friend] said you were broke, but he didn't tell me you were pretty”.
I feel like shit man. I know my financial status doesn't define my worth as a person, but it doesn’t make me feel good. (Also my friend sucks, but that's not the focus here). I feel like I can't talk about all the weirdness I'm experiencing. My job situation is embarrassing, and talking about my glow up sounds like bragging.
I’m just in a weird space right, and it’d be nice to hear from other men about it.
Hey, if it makes you feel better, statistically, being more attractive is going to lead you to higher odds of employment!
Damn that’s a very good fucking point lmao
Better prospects AND better pay. You’re male so you already have that going for you. And if you’re white, man, “yiu have management written all over you”!
Exactly this. The 3 rules of success:
I couldn’t resist. It’s a reference to an old funny video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxuUkYiaUc8
On a more serious note, OP, good job on your self improvement! I had to move back with my folks for a bit in my 20s while looking for work and it sucked. But I was also grateful to have a free roof over my head. If I were you I’d just tell people the truth, with confidence. “I live with my mother for now as I’m seeking more lucrative opportunities and going into debt is a bad idea. I’ve been working hard on myself lately, on the physical health side, and the next target is a job that pays better.“ If people judge you for that, fuk’em! Sounds to me like you’re on a good path and you are taking care of yourself. Keep it up!
i felt like you did something awesome (put time into yourself) and now you feel bad? because you haven't gotten as far as you would have liked, assuming about 'still unemp, still at home'? glass half empty I suppose. hey, i understand, pity party feels right every now and then. yet, it sounds like you're on the right track, so way to go, and keep it up.
Yeah man you’re right. Unemployment is only temporary but man it sucks. It sucks a lot. It’s hard to even be grateful for the other stuff going right because the job hunt just sucks the fun out of everything else.
It is low key a pity party, but also I really struggle with the entire job hunt. It’s my ADHD, but I really be in hell throughout the whole process. Like this shit is really making it hard for to be happy about anything.
I don’t feel suicidal often but once I sit down to work on my resume the dark thoughts come in heavy. It feels so dumb too, why would I hurt myself over employment?
As a fellow ADHDer who's had serious depression sparked by long bouts of unemployment let me say - the majority advice of job hunting is NOT built for us. 'oh just tweak your resume daily and spam it everywhere possible' - not only is this generating lower returns than ever, but resume tweaking feels like a process of self flagellation as you get to think through all the ways you're not as good as you're trying to make your experiences sound.
IMO the way to go for us is to slowly make that resume as nice as you can once, then send it along while pursuing word of mouth opportunities and networking with the occasional drop into online forms if you see something that specifically caught your eye.
Oh and fuck setting up metrics for yourself for this. It always just made me even angrier at myself for missing my entirely arbitrary goals for applications per day. If you're trying, that's good enough and you should be proud of yourself for struggling through a hellish process.
Edit - feel free to DM me if you want to chat more about this. It really helps to not feel so alone in the process and dear god do I relate to everything you say about the job hunt process.
I'm glad you're stating this. I'm not sure if I've got ADHD or what, but the daily applications grind and keeping track of it all was helpful, but genuinely one of the most soul crushing things I had to do. I say this as someone who now has a job, so it's not even like I'm going through it haha.
The word of mouth of the neighbour of a coworker is what finally got me this job, so lean hard on networking for sure. Worst case, someone knows you for a bit.
I'm glad it was validating! It's definitely not solely an ADHD issue, but I feel pretty strongly the negative emotions the process digs up is particularly bad for us and our natural inclination to overthink and self critique.
idk but i think part of the 'dark thoughts' is coming in from this tendency people have to look too far down the road, project too far into the future, or imagine/catastroph-ize about things that might actually be likely to happen. You apply, you don't get any message back from them; you talk to some people (hopefully), and maybe they make you an offer; and maybe you take the job or you dont! Try not to look too far beyond that when you pick up your materials, and write your letter, and send it off. Take a little discrete slice, from right up in front of your nose, and lock in on that. then after you send it off, do something nice to celebrate your work, you earned it, and keep it up. you'll have bad days, but you keep picking it up.
there are a lot of people in the job hunt right now. honestly, i feel like i'm writing this comment to myself.
Job hunting sucks. Hard. It’s a shitty experience overall and even worse in the last couple of years. No way around it though.
Something that might help is “Never search alone”. It’s a book but more importantly it’s a community. You register and get paired with 5–6 other people in the same situation (but different professions) and you support each other while following the program. There are genuinely useful things in it like asking former coworkers about you and discussing your profile and experience with recruiters without asking for a job, just to understand the market etc.
I found it helpful (not a silver bullet though sometimes you get a demotivated group and have to switch), but it’s helpful to go through it with others and it makes it suck less.
I’m going to actually check this out!
One thing I found in grad school with my dissertation work, is that it's really easy for me to think about the flaws in my work, the things I didn't do, my limitations. But then when I would explain my work to my wife, I'd realize, "wow, I really did do something." If you have a friend (a better friend than the one mentioned above!), maybe you can do that with them.
Another thing that helped me with my resume and cover letters was having Claude "interview" me. I'd put my existing resume, the company website and job description into the prompt, and ask it to ask me questions to improve and expand my resume. Basically, get it to help you focus on your accomplishments. I would definitely use the cover letter output as fodder and rewrite it, since AI writing has a recognizable tone.
Also, lots of good resume advice on Ask a Manager: https://www.askamanager.org/
Good luck with your job search.
Broseph, you gotta take the wins where you can get them. I have a job that's remote that's pretty much website test and show up for meetings, and I can never be sure that I'm doing enough and think I'm going to get axed in the next bad quarter. Now granted, I am a contractor and have AI in my job description, so that's entirely possible, but the point is that defining yourself by your work is going to follow you around no matter what you do, so you might as well work on something that makes you happy or puts you in a position to put you in a position where you can put things on the resume. Audit classes, learn a skill, make a garden, volunteer, something to keep the demons away. You're rich in time, and just because it doesn't transfer to money 1:1 doesn't mean it's not valuable. You're in good health, maybe see if you can swing a therapist, and set goals for yourself that you can accomplish. When you cross those off, put a new one on, see what happens.
Employment feels like air man, having it isn’t everything but not having it is
At the same time, if someone can give you a validating career, they can take it away just as easily. Identity has got to come from you.
I feel like I understand how you feel, at least in some ways. About the tying social value to work, not the being hot part.
When I was unemployed for a while, I started doing some part time volunteer work, and that really helped my mental state. It got me socializing in a work-type environment, and I felt like I was doing something useful. Turns out that I was feeling kind of useless when my only tangible output for the past several months was getting better at rock climbing and denied job applications. I ended up putting the volunteer work on my resume, which may have contributed to getting a job offer later. That's just a bonus though. I think the main benefit was the effect on my attitude and mental state at the time.
Damn that’s really good advice
Bro just tell people you're a model. If you ever accidentally say it to someone in the industry and they ask to see your portfolio, just be honest and there's like a 50-50 chance they'll still help you lol
Yeah man I mean, set some new goals, keep working towards them. You're already crushing it, all it'll take is some time to find the right job and apartment. I fell into bank tellering cuz I needed something easy where I could play on my phone, develop soft skills and escape my own parents house, and the boon from having my own place has been awesome. But I'm not keeping in shape so no one is looking at me! And I'm 32!
A few things will change and you'll be in the money, keep on keeping on!
All my other goals are downstream of having a job😭
Fitness and money aren't the only goals to have mi amigo! Work on some arts, create something, put some goals on books or crafts. Knitting, coding, the ocarina. These can be achieved pretty cheaply! Don't forget to practice Gun Hold
Taking better care of yourself is still a pretty big step so try to celebrate that as much as you can.
I would basically be in your opposite situation; I am employed and I earn a bit of money, but I don't like my physique at all and I have an unhealthy sedentary lifestyle I'm trying to fix.
If you want to rant about the unemployment part, feel free to do so, I'm sure we'd all be willing to listen. The job market sucks, and while I don't know your professional background, the best thing you can do right now is keep trying and apply to anything that seems worthwhile.
Yeah but the application process is just painful for me. I struggle so much with papers and paperwork that almost dropped out of undergrad over it. I actually did drop out of grad school over it.
Hell, part of my glow up is because I started taking meds and supplements and working out to somehow make this stuff more tolerable. It feels like everything improved but the main thing I was trying to do.
I’m deadass thinking about giving up on employment and trying to get social security benefits because this feels way too hard for me
You managed to get hot. Getting hot != easy. You can conquer bureaucracy. You are here typing in coherent and engaging English. I believe in you!
Also what @Akir said.
Honestly it happened on accident lol. Turns out diet and exercise work.
Also I’m a tall dude artsy dude so the ladies like that lol
...i've transited a similar phase and totally grok your feelings about it...it helped me to frame the experience as a sabbatical; i went so far as to move across the continent to a new region with no contacts, treat it as a walkabout, and restart from zero...
Find a local temp agency. I've had far better luck finding jobs through those than anywhere else.