Overqualified and underpaid

The overqualified, underpaid reality feels all too common lately, doesn’t it?

You spend years building a career like it’s a Lego set for adults—piece by piece, project by project, thinking if you just keep following the instructions, you’ll eventually create something stable.

But then… restructuring.

Suddenly, you’re standing there in your “Employee of the Quarter” hoodie holding a severance packet like it’s a consolation prize in a game you didn’t know you were playing. One day you’re giving onboarding presentations and color-coding project plans. The next, you’re Googling “how to file for unemployment without crying.”

We were told if we got good grades, went to college, built the résumé, shook the hands, smiled in meetings, said “pivot” enough times, and learned Excel really well, we’d be recession-proof.

But now? We’re emotionally supported by caffeine, aggressively typing into portals that ask us to upload our résumé—and then fill it in manually, because that’s the corporate version of a trust fall.

Every job post says “must be a self-starter” and “thrives in chaos,” and buddy—I do. I once kept my cool through 14 rounds of layoffs, two CEOs, a software migration, and Sharon microwaving fish in the breakroom. I thrive in chaos. Hire me just for surviving Sharon.

And don’t get me started on the interviews.

“Tell me about a time you failed.”

Okay. Well. There was that time I thought loyalty to a company would be repaid in kind.

Or when I spent six hours on a project for a panel interview only to never hear back. Ghosted. By a job I didn’t even want by the end of the process. Honestly, I think the ATS is the only one who actually read my résumé.

But real talk? This isn’t just about jobs. This is about identity.

When you’ve tied so much of your worth to what you do, what happens when that title disappears?

You wake up without a calendar full of back-to-back Zooms. You lose that automatic small talk answer when someone asks “So what do you do?” and you start replying with awkward honesty like: “Right now? A little bit of healing. A little bit of panicking. A little bit of staring into the fridge wondering if unemployment snacks hit different.”

It’s funny. And it’s not. It’s both.

Because we’re walking paradoxes right now.

We’re highly skilled and wildly overlooked.

We’re “top candidates” and “not the right fit.”

We’re grateful and exhausted.

We’re trusting God… and refreshing our emails like, “Lord, any time now.”

But maybe—just maybe—we’re being reshaped in all this.

Because the truth is: your title was never your identity.

Your worth isn’t something that can be restructured.

And the music hasn’t stopped. It’s just a new song, with a slower rhythm, starting somewhere deep within.

You’re not falling behind. You’re being recalibrated.

You’re not broken. You’re being rebuilt.

And one day soon, you’ll look back at this valley with empathy, strength, and receipts.

Because you didn’t give up.

You stayed in it.

And you let it make you softer, stronger, wiser—and yes, even funnier.

Stay in the fight.

Your comeback is going to confuse a lot of people who thought you were done.