Cheers to 2025
January 5, 2025
Every New Year holds promise, as though it is any different from the turn of
Are you out of job and grappling with mental health and despair. This short post may provide guidance and direction.
Dear Reader,
It’s great to connect with you once again.
I feel an urgent need to write about people who are languishing as a result of being in between jobs.
Cassandra is a friend of mine . She no longer has her bank manager job and has been exhibiting some unusual behaviour, like not picking calls, being withdrawn, and shunning social interactions. A once bubbling Cassandra now finds it difficult to keep up with conversations.
Conversation with her now is usually characterized by intermittent silence mostly from her end. She certainly hasn’t been the same after leaving paid employment.
Cassandra’s situation is quite common. When you are not in paid employment there’s the tendency to be withdrawn from normal social activities and wallow in man-made self misery. While finances may not remain the same, it’s not an excuse for the anti-social behaviour or lack of drive. You are still the same if you believe so.
The most important player in your life is you. Don’t languish after you leave paid employment.
The employment situation globally has been topsy turvy. People are out of jobs for various reasons; layoffs, redundancy, downsizing, relocation, unemployment, lack of job satisfaction etc. While some of these reasons seem beyond personal control, reasons such as lack of job satisfaction are somewhat a matter of choice, afterall they say “happiness is a choice”.
Here are some tips you may find useful while you are not in employment:
1. Stay Positive and Connected
You may not be employed but you can make sure you are not jobless. It’s ok when our friends and family who live abroad tell us they are in between jobs. Why? Back home we perceive being out of job as something like a death blow. You know what?
It’s a stereotype!
I would agree with you that your bills need to be paid from a steady source of income and you need to be engaged in a financially rewarding activity. Let’s try staying positive. Your job is just one source of income, you may not have that source of income but there are other sources of income so look for another source of income be it another paid employment or self employment.
2. Stay Engaged
You need to stay engaged. Don’t shut out your friends, colleagues and family or altogether shut down. Please be seen doing something. You have the social media handles to showcase you and what you do. Everyone loves progress, you being out of job should not limit your progress. You are more likely to be recommended for another job when you are seen making progress. Pick your calls, you never know opportunities people might like to recommend or connect you with.
3. Update your CV
There’s no better time to update your CV than now when you have time at your disposal. Take trainings, attend workshops, seminars and conferences. There are free training sessions, seminars etc. If you can afford paid trainings please go for it but try not to embark on the ones with high cost implications because you need to be prudent, the usual income is not there.
This may also be the time to embark on that higher level education. Get a masters or MBA or doctorate. No knowledge is lost. You can’t afford to be stale.
4. Discover your latent talents
Take the time to learn what interests you; tailoring, farming, gardening, writing, coding, photography, designing etc. We have so many videos that teach crafts on YouTube. In acquiring a skill you can discover talents you never knew you had or which have not been in use. A new skill can take you to the next level.
5. Follow Your Passion
Yes, this is the time to follow your passion. Businesses sometimes develop from one’s passion. You may go from being a tech expert to a techpreneur, from a business development executive to an entrepreneur, from a corporate communications expert to a writer, from an investment manager to a financial advisor to startups etc. The list is actually endless and there are lots of success stories around.
Don’t lose steam or self confidence, keep at it and all the best!
Adebisi Blaque writes from Lagos and has only recently re-discovered her passion for writing.
Related Posts
FIGHTING ADDICTION
September 26, 2026
I once spent an entire Saturday preparing to write a business plan. I did not
The Year the Streets Would Not Let Them Rest
September 26, 2026
What the Dancing Plague of 1518 still has to teach a city like Lagos A
THE MIND IS A BATTLEFIELD
September 22, 2026
There is a particular kind of madness that visits a man stuck in traffic on the Third Mainland Bridge at half past six in the evening. I remember one such evening clearly. The cars were not moving. The okada men had long given up weaving between them and were now just leaning on their bikes, chatting. And somewhere between Adeniji and Oworonshoki, my mind decided to open a courtroom.
THE MAN IN THE MIRROR
September 22, 2026
I once sat in a gathering of otherwise reasonable, educated Nigerians, the kind of room where everyone has an opinion and every opinion is delivered with total conviction, and listened to a full hour of righteous fury about the state of the country. The politicians were thieves. The system was broken. Nobody in government cared about the common man. Heads nodded. Glasses were raised. It was, by every measure, an excellent vilification session, and I nodded along with the rest of them, because every word of it was true.
LATE BLOOMER
September 22, 2026
I remember scrolling through one of those glossy “Forbes 30 Under 30” style lists one quiet night, the kind of night when you are not really looking for trouble but find it anyway. Photograph after photograph of confident young faces, each caption more impressive than the last. Founded a company at twenty two. Sold it at twenty six. Sat on a panel by twenty eight.
The Law of wasted efforts
August 8, 2026
There is a statistic that should discourage any lion from ever hunting again. Three out of every four times a lion charges after prey, it fails. Twenty five percent success. Seventy five percent waste. If a man ran a business on those numbers, his accountant would resign quietly, his investors would call an emergency meeting, and his mother would move from praying for his success to praying for his sense.
The Full Cup
August 4, 2026
There is a woman I know, call her Adaeze, who loves her husband the way a well-tended fire loves the wood it is given: completely, warmly, without……
The Paradox of giving:When generosity becomes complicated
August 4, 2026
A message arrives from someone you have not spoken to in years. A parent needs surgery. An account number is attached, and a photograph of a hospital bill that may or may not be real. You have just been paid. Not much is left after rent and the small emergencies that always find a way to arrive before the salary does. You send something anyway. You do not ask why the message found you specifically, out of everyone this person knows.
Some Animals Are Still More Equal
August 4, 2026
I ran into a post on social media a few days ago. Someone had turned Animal Farm into a slideshow, cartoon pigs in suits, captions lifted straight from the book, the whole thing dressed up for a scrolling audience. It stopped me mid scroll, the way certain things from your teenage years do when they show up uninvited in your adult timeline.
She Was Never the Weaker One. We Were Just Reading the Wrong Manual Part 2
June 23, 2026
In Part One, we established something that the available evidence handles quite comfortably: the female is not the weaker version
She Was Never the Weaker One. We Were Just Reading the Wrong Manual Part 1
June 23, 2026
Her name was Nkechi. She was thirty-one years old, and she was dying — at least, that is what the doctors privately believed.
They Found a Computer. It Was 2,000 Years Old
June 23, 2026
It was the spring of 1900. A group of Greek sponge divers, blown off course by a fierce Mediterranean storm, dropped anchor near the small island of Antikythera — a barren, wind-battered speck of land sitting between Crete and the Greek mainland. They were looking for shelter. What they found instead would take another century for the world to begin to understand.
They Drew for the Sky. No One on the Ground Could See
June 23, 2026
In 1927, a Peruvian archaeologist named Toribio Mejia Xesspe was hiking through the desert plateau south of Lima when he noticed something odd about the ground. Shallow lines. Trenches, really — no deeper than 10 to 30 centimetres — scraped into the reddish-brown surface of the earth to reveal the pale yellow-grey subsoil beneath. They ran in straight lines for hundreds of metres. He noted them, filed a report, and moved on. They were curious. They were not yet miraculous.
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Discover more from Akin Akingbogun
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
15 thoughts on “Don’t stop living because you are in between jobs- by Adebisi Blaque”
Great stuff
This is great. piece of work and so inspiring.
Thank you Solape.
Great encouragement for us to be focus at all times.
This piece is quite apt in this situation we found ourselves. People are dealing with lots of conditions silently not knowing what to do or where to go and as such exhibiting mental health issues without recognizing it. We really need to be our brothers keeper by checking on family and friends to know how they are doing.
This will surely help somebody currently in this place.
I want to also add that you can volunteer your services free of charge. It will keep you sharp and help you become more proficient. Need I to add that, when there’s an opportunity for employment in the field and place you’re volunteering, you’ll naturally be the first port of call. Additionally, look outwards. By this, I mean, look beyond your immediate environment to seek remote employment from other countries. Thankfully, the internet is here to help us and as we would say locally, “Google is your friend.”
This is a very inspring and quite true.
Kudos!!!
Useful tips. Thank you sir
Thanks! Will share with others
Come and ask me!
Loosing a job can be a such a terrible feeling and having to resign from a job you truly love is another unpleasant experience.
This is so encouraging and inspiring
This is an interesting read. Insightful with lessons learnt and clearly teaching us that our jobs shouldn’t define us.
Brilliant writeup and coming at much needed time. Keep up the good work.
Awesome read, thanks for sharing these helpful tips
Very inspiring. Thank you