A couple of weeks ago, a TV news show had some advice from a "job expert." So I stayed tuned through the commercials to hear what the expert had to say.

Well, the one piece of advice he had for a person losing his current job was for that person to reinvent himself. Instead of looking for the type of job he or she recently lost, he should reengineer a job or hobby he had been involved with sometime in the past and bring it up to the present, despite the fact that the job might be obsolete, such as when I taught accordion or trimmed windows.

Will most jobs move from one era to another? Are there still Mag Card operators around? Do companies still use DOS as part of their computer programs?

Yet, it pays to remember that each of us is a unique person. And if we stopped to pay attention to life as it moves eternally forward, we quite possibly have picked up some skills that could perhaps be combined and sold in today's market. A person who has some of the interests that I do told me she has gotten a job from Craigslist. She said that most of her skills didn't fit the employer's description but they called her in, hired her, and she has been working there for well over a year. And I remember that I was once hired for a word processor position because I have a degree in theater.

The first time I got laid off in 1991, I worried, fretted, and was out of work for almost two years. Yet, I had to admit that I had a unique bunch of baggage that added up to who I am and what I have to offer. And as George and Ira Gershwin wrote, coincidently in the year I was born, "They Can't Take That Away From Me."