It took almost nine months, roughly the length of a full-term pregnancy, for me to find a new position. I’m not going to draw parallels between being born and being employed. Still, I found I was as impatient as any expectant parent to finally be done with the seemingly endless lead-up to the big event. Now that it’s over, I’m amazed at how much better I feel.

For anyone still looking, I don’t know that I can offer any words of encouragement other than the usual, trite nothings that everyone told me. It’ll get better. Something good is bound to happen. That sort of thing.

Even so, if you’re looking to make the shift from unemployed to employed, I can at least relate my own experience. It seemed like an unrelenting storm of worry and uncertainty. And at times it seemed like it might never end.

But it does.

It may not seem like it, but I think if you keep plugging away, keep sending out those resumes and taking calls, and reading the job boards, and forums, that eventually you catch a break. You eventually nail a good interview with a good employer, and they invite you to join their team.

And then you get to look back and watch that unemployed patch recede into the past, like a bad dream from which you’ve finally awoken.