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The two sides of a career coin

Career happiness and satisfaction isn’t the same thing and why listening to your gut is important

Hoang Samuelson
5 min readApr 11, 2020
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

This week, as I join the throngs of people who are unemployed, down to their last $10 in the bank & living off some savings, while filing for unemployment and patiently waiting for a response from the state as well as many job applications, I’ve had time to really reflect on my situation and how I got here.

First, let me backtrack to 2009.

As a newly minted college graduate, I was full of hopes, dreams and delusions. I was fortunate enough to have gotten a job right after graduation for a small company in town where I progressed from being an intern to regular employee, only to be laid off several months later due to the Great Recession.

But that was hardly the tip of the iceberg. Following my layoff, I discovered that I wasn’t qualified for unemployment benefits due to the fact that I was a student employee the previous year. Then I did my taxes (first time as a married couple) only to discover that we owed more money than we had in the bank. Thus, within a month I took a job at a local clinic doing administrative work, where I lasted for a year.

What I remember most from this time was the feeling of shame. Shame that I had to…

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Hoang Samuelson
Hoang Samuelson

Written by Hoang Samuelson

Features Editor @ Chowhound. Former lead editor @BooknBrunch.com. Writer of food, family and fiction. Based in Portland, OR. More at hoangsamuelson.com

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