Life after a job

Until his career became a casualty of a publishing merger, Martin Slofstra was the editorial director of the IT Group at Transcontinental Media, which published a number of information technology magazines including Computing Canada, Computer Dealer News, Communications and Networking, Direction Informatique, Technology in Government, ITBusiness.ca, a daily news web site, and EDGE magazine, which he helped launch in 1997 as Canada's first technology magazine for business executives.

Then IT World Canada, a division of the worldwide International Data Group (IDG) bought all the Transcon titles and, in the aftermath, Slofstra was made redundant.

Now, he is writing an occasional and very interesting (and, I'm sure he hopes, short-lived) column for the Globe and Mail's careers section called "Diary of a Job Hunter" (the article is pay-per-view, unfortunately). I say interesting, because it is rare to have so candid a view of the feelings and turmoil that comes to a 25-year veteran journalist left in the wake of a corporate takeover.

Sloftstra talks about going from commuting daily to an office to working freelance, from home.

I've gone from being a busy, sought-after editor-in-chief to a lonely, work-at-home freelance writer, who is finding it extremely difficult to get used to the isolation of a home office.

There are benefits, such as getting caught up with household chores and errands. And he avoids 10 hours a week of commuting between his Brampton home and his Scarborough office. But he finds the freelance life and job-searching life lonely and frustrating. And he misses his job.

When the axe fell on my career as an editorial director for technology and trade publications, my instinct was to leave both my profession (journalism) and the industry (information technology) behind and try something completely different.

Then I did a little test. I attended two IT-related events in Toronto I would have gone to had I still been in my former position. They showed me I do miss my job. That also makes me wonder whether I really do want to completely start all over again, or will be better off if I can bring at least some of my former work to whatever I'll be doing.