How the Seasonal Rhythms of Backyard Birds Healed My Job Search Burnout

My boss didn’t even say hello. He just said my name and read from a script. And that was it. Seven years in that editor role role and, in 60 seconds, the job was done. I had nurtured the work with great pride and care. Pretty tough to turn that off like a faucet. I wished I could vacuum the suddenly useless information, and my weird adoration for it, from my brain. I closed my computer and stared out the window. A Mourning Dove blinked at me, eyes ringed in baby blue like a ‘70s disco queen, and I looked back, a newly laid-off 50-something. It was something to be witnessed.

After that, each jobless day was equally as jarring. I was lonely, adrift in the sudden black hole of unstructured days. I kept getting up, making coffee, and sitting down in front of my laptop. Dozens of tabs open. Refreshing job listings and wishfully clicking for new DMs all day long. I started a spreadsheet to log every resume I sent out. A tracker to prove my productivity. I looked up when a woodpecker started drumming our telephone pole, but I kept performing work. I made a new job out of looking for a job. At 54, I was too young to retire but also feeling too old to compete for the few job openings in a new, AI-driven job market.

On one of those mornings, I opened my empty email box for the umpteenth time and, frustrated, pushed back from my desk to look outside and see a large crow standing on the power line overhead. Pitch-black and glossy, he started cawing at me, throwing his full body forward in my direction. I couldn’t hear much through the window, but I knew it was loud, commanding. Caw! Caw! Caw! he warned. 

What I couldn’t hear, I saw, felt, and strangely understood. OK, I see you. I’m paying attention. You are here. Maybe I don’t have to spend every moment anxiously searching. I am here, too.

When the crow finally stilled, I saw the gleaming kiss of morning dew on his lower beak. Beautiful.

I’ve been an avid birder for decades, but without the distraction of work, the familiar sparrows, finches, warblers, starlings, and titmice in my California backyard became something more. As I applied for my 38th job and waited through long silences, their first note of daybreak song and  frantic sunset dashes began to mark time. A scrub-jay’s bawk, the daily gang of Bushtits, the orange comet of a flicker overhead—these small, repeated encounters gave shape to days that otherwise felt nebulous.  

Back at my desk, I tinkered with AI tools, determined not to be left behind. I tried automating editorial steps I knew by heart—brainstorms, outlines, summaries—but the results often felt hollow. The work was faster, yes, but blander. I missed the friction of the process, the slow forming of an idea as it found its shape. Some parts of writing—the wandering, the not knowing, the sitting with something until it reveals itself—don’t translate. They require staying in uncertainty a little longer.

Outside, the birds—so ordinary, so constant—anchored me in something more enduring than productivity. Watching and seeing was its own kind of participation. The White-crowned Sparrow with bedhead was always the first one up. A visit from a passing Cooper’s Hawk sent everyone into a tizzy. I could always hear the trill of Cedar Waxwings before I could see them. At sundown, the titmouse always goes on one last snack-finding frenzy, filling up a secret stash somewhere nearby. 

At dusk, watching the crows tread across a pinkish evening sky, I started to hear my own voice and set my own pace within the universe. 

Slowly, I began to spend less and less time at my desk. More time in the yard. More time with myself. I sat still long enough to notice clouds were always moving. I studied the intricate constellations the spider spun overnight. I watched a caterpillar walk from leaf to stem to the trunk of the tree and away from here. Soon, I heard the Snow Geese go over flying south. 

One afternoon, standing on my back deck, a madly vibrating hummingbird met me eye to eye and hovered. We held each other’s gaze for a brief moment. I held my breath. Just be, just be, just be, I thought. Until she darted off into the day. 

I’m eight months into my job search now, and the uncertainty hasn’t lifted. The geese have flown north again in their big Vs up in the sky. The Mourning Dove has a boyfriend. Life continues—a rhythmic, seasonal, ongoing march. The mockingbird is back claiming his space with that wild and restless repertoire. He repeats the same phrases over and over again, and the light shifts across the yard.