Always darkest before dawn

I met up with two friends today. Both of them used to be gainfully employed as architects in Portland. One has been reduced to 10 hours a week and has gone back to school, and the other is looking for a new job. We commiserated and shared the experiences of looking for work in a heavily saturated and over-sized local market. We theorized about how hiring will lag as firms absorb incoming work with half-timers before hiring new employees. We talked about what we're doing to try and make ourselves more marketable or valuable, and whether or not that will make much difference. We wondered how many people were going to leave the profession solely because of this recession.

It's tough out there right now. For many people, but in Oregon especially (11% unemployment) and for Portland architects (almost 50% unemployed in December).

But history swings; not always in rhythm, nor with convenience, yet surely the pendulum must pause and zenith before beginning a return journey. What is has been and will be again. No famine lasts forever, everything created has a beginning and an end. Jobs were here, they've disappeared for now, but they will come back again.


That's the easy part though for me. Partially because I'm in a circumstance where it's easy to live off unemployment, where I could probably find a minimum wage gig if I needed to that would pay enough to live on. I have enough money saved up I might even be able to go travel again! I have no worries about food or shelter or clothing; I'm off far better than lilies and birds.

But the tough part is the patience to wait for things to return, and to work in the meantime on things which have no foreseeable return. Like becoming a LEED accredited professional, learning new software, studying books and adjusting my portfolio over and over. The tough part is not having opportunities to grasp at, or a purpose to get up earlier than 10am, or progressing further in my career or achieving goals I hold for my life. It just feels like I had a plan, which got sidelined, and I'm not getting the opportunity to fix it.

But I'm reminded and chastised a bit for having such a narrow view of my life. There is no reason why lacking a job or daily labor is keeping me from doing things which are progressing me towards my future. I don't even know what tomorrow holds, so how can I say that taking cooking classes and reading library books or considering unorthodox jobs isn't preparing me for what God has in store for my life? I hardly really understand my own past, how can I say that this is not working out my future?

I cannot. And that's more than a little frustrating. But it reminds me of the our instructions in the Lord's prayer: to ask for our daily bread. Not for a year's supply or a lifetime supply. Just today's bread. I have enough for today, and though I prepare for what may be coming tomorrow, I have to move forward knowing that whether I hit goals or never accomplish anything, the only thing I have any right to ask for from my creator is my daily bread, and to let that be enough.