Novel way of fighting back from job loss
AFTER losing his job in a boardroom reorganisation, former company boss David Sartof has first hand experience of how the recession has hit hard.
As the weeks of fruitless job hunting turned to months, many people may have become consumed by depression, anger or self-pity.
Instead the 52-year-old former RAF officer turned management consultant has kept himself busy by fulfilling a lifetime ambition to write a novel.
typical day
A typical day in the past 18 months would see him waving wife Yvonne off to work from their home at Pickill, near Ripon, and taking his eight-year-old son Finlay to school before returning to research the jobs market, filling in numerous applications and then knuckling down to his book.
Today the former schoolmate of Sir Clive Woodward and Ian Duncan-Smith is still searching for employment but his self-published book, River of Judgement, is about to hit the shelves.
fast-paced tale
It's a fast-paced tale focusing on three individuals fighting to survive their own personal entanglements and the cut-throat savagery of London's financial world in the run-up to the stockmarket crash.
It is not an autobiography, but there is no doubt David's own personal experience of dog-eat-dog high finance, job loss and growing exasperation at rejection after rejection have given him useful personal insight into fighting back from adversity.
'reality check'
"For the first time in my life I found I didn't have a job to go to but the mortgage and family bills were still there each month. It's a sharp reality check as to how thin the line is between a comfortable life and a hand to mouth existence" said David.
His own carefully planned-out daily routine is probably down to the many years he spent as a commissioned officer with the RAF, including secondment to NATO and working with GCHQ.
He left the service in 1997 and set up as a management consultant and then insurance broker until, in 2008, the recession saw him leaving the company he founded. There was no six-figure severance package, just a reality check in the challenge that faces middle-aged professionals forced to re-enter the jobs market in the teeth of a recession.
coping
"I think the experience of an ordered military lifestyle has definitely helped me cope with unemployment. You have to have structure to your day, goals to aim for and a purpose in life; without that I can see how the constant rejections could lead to depression and resentment setting in," said David.
David also acknowledges the daily human contact at the school gate, the local pub and about the village has helped his work as an author, providing an insight he might not have seen if he were still working. And if he were still working he would not have had the time to be a school governor or carry out voluntary work.
"You have to get out and about, it keeps you sane and also gives a window into the different ways people go about their lives," he says. "I hope people see the characters in my book as three-dimensional and that is possibly down to the time I've had to observe and reflect over the past 18 months; whether they would be as rounded if I'd been working full time I'm not so sure."
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Ripon
Thursday 09 February 2012
Today
Light snow
Temperature: -1 C to 1 C
Wind Speed: 10 mph
Wind direction: South
Tomorrow
Light snow
Temperature: -3 C to 1 C
Wind Speed: 15 mph
Wind direction: South east
