Underemployed in Maplewood

If you are patron of Maplewood Kings Super Market, you may have had a Princeton grad slicing your meat. Elsewhere in town, a former Conde Nast marketing exec may be making your sandwich, a Ph.D. in English Literature has sold you jewelry, or a former Newsweek contributor is blogging for a pittance.

It has been particularly disconcerting for this editor to be parcelling out freelance work to many a writer who has more experience in commercial media than I—writers who have worked for More magazine, Real Simple, The New York Times, you name it.

As chronicled by Lois Cantwell on Patch, the Professionals in Transitions meetings that take place Monday mornings at the Maplewood Memorial Library Main Branch are well attended and filled with mid-to-late career professionals who are a bit dazed by their circumstances and simultaneously heartened and panicked by the quality of their cohorts. 

No one I know of has chronicled the painful transitions that the economy and global trends have dealt us more eloquently than Maplewood's own Kirk Petersen. Petersen's current posting on his always excellent blog All That is Necessary. . . is titled "From Mach 2 to Muenster to Madison." It is a starkly honest depiction of his journey from globe-trotting Merrill Lynch hotshot to independent consultant to deli man to parish administrator (taking his wife's old job).

Petersen's blog is at once frightening and comforting. Frightening because, if this can happen to someone as qualified, articulate and thoughtful as Petersen, then who among us is safe? Comforting because Petersen shows us that there is a path and has the wisdom to see the broader picture of how "billions of people would trade places with me in a heartbeat" owing to his status simply as an American with a humble home and loving family.

Petersen has written occasionally for Patch, most recently covering New Jersey's marriage equality legislation. Now that Petersen again has a full-time job, we will be seeing less of him on Patch. We wish him well and plan to link to his blog regularly.