The Unemployed Life

Artifacts from Your Former Life

For me, it’s a stash of overflowing bags crammed full of papers, pens, Post-It notes, trinkets, cards received, file folders, business cards.

For Sara, one of my co-founders, it’s boxes that contain art that once hung on the walls.

Everyone leaves their office with the bits and pieces that made up their former work life – how do you keep those artifacts from your former life from languishing, merely detritus of the old you?

Sara took her art and worked it into her apartment, combining the before and now. I’ve still got the bags waiting for me to sort through and toss.

Cards of Change has another idea for purging without purging: Use your business card, a symbolic signifier of who you are, to create change in your life.

Started by a former executive at ad agency TBWA\Chiat\Day, Cards of Change wants laid off workers to take their old business cards, cross out the old information and create something new, to express “stories of change.”

“Love living my dream, creation,” writes a former art school administrator turned artist post-layoff.

“Remember The Who ’69? I’m Free!” writes an ex-exec who crossed out his title and added these words.

Another former employee has taken their business cards and has covered them in hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades – turning them into a set of playing cards.

Cards of Change lets anyone upload an image of their transformed business cards – in the hopes that real transformation will take place.

We like the idea — but it’s also okay to just toss it all. Which I should really do with the bags that have been sitting there since January!

Tags: art, business cards, new career, The Unemployed Life, transformation