True story: A young man loses his business and, eventually, his friends. Cocaine. The night his last friend gives up on him and tosses him out, the kid becomes homeless. He wanders the streets of suburban Phoenix, dazed and forlorn.
At one point he encounters a fountain, and finding comfort in the sound of the water, lies on the grass and falls asleep. Later, he realizes that the grass and fountain are in the middle of a cemetery.
This is too creepy to bear, too grimly premonitory, and he looks for another place to rest. He notices a door ajar in a nearby church, wherein a pew becomes his bed, a Bible his pillow.
The next morning, he awakes to four women standing above him, looking down in amazement. He has the presence of mind to inquire lightly, “Am I early for church?”
To their credit, the ladies of the church do not condemn or cry out for police; rather, they live up to Christian principles and seek to help. They get him breakfast and a hotel room and then find a place where he can go and be safe: an old bowling alley converted to a men’s center, temporary home to 90 men with nowhere else to turn.
It was there that I met the young man, as part of some volunteer career counseling I do. It’s where I get regular lessons in how slippery life’s slope can be.
Still for many people with astray careers as I meet at the men’s center, I hear from many times more in letters or e-mails. Strangers confide in me, having read my books or newspaper columns and feeling, God bless them, that I might understand.
From them I learned what fragile things careers can be, for though these folks might not end up living in a converted bowling alley, a layoff or firing can start a spiral of misfortune that leads to reduced circumstances and ruptured relationships.
The Play’s The Thing
Through the years, I’d acquired some strategies and techniques to help with such career difficulties. So I did what I do, and wrote them up as a book. I wrote it as fiction, sliding lessons into the story. About the time I’d finished a first draft, my son was in a school production of “It’s a Wonderful Life.” (He played Clarence, the angel.)
I recognized the similarities between what I’d been writing and the plot of the play — the decent guy who ends up broken and contemplating suicide — and decided that I’d make the adviser character in the book an angel and call my version “It’s A Wonderful Job.”
The result was a manuscript that I merrily sent off to my agent and my publisher, only to learn that they had no interest in it. After all, they told me, there was no money to be made from a book for people who had no money to spend on books.
Hold on, I insisted, it wasn’t just for the unemployed, it was for anyone who wanted a new start, or even a new direction. Address the toughest case and all the others become that much simpler. It didn’t matter, they reasoned — I didn’t have a big enough audience.
So the book manuscript sat around, which seemed a shame because I believe it could be of use to a lot of people. Then it hit me: I would give it away.
So I had it converted to an e-book, and I recorded it as an audiobook. My son put them on www.dauten.com, and they are available to anyone who might benefit from them. No sign-up or registration is needed, just my writer’s plea that if it helps, you tell me about it and maybe buy one of my other books.
So, if you wake up on the cemetery lawn or a church pew, or just wish you’d wake up in a new career, the better angel of new careers is waiting to meet you and have a talk.
Dale Dauten is the founder of The Innovators’ Lab. His latest book is “(Great) Employees Only: How Gifted Bosses Hire and De-Hire Their Way to Success.”
