Elizabeth, New Jersey Apr 14, 2022 (Issuewire.com) - Losing a job is one of the most stressful events people can face in their lives. But for employees in their fifties and sixties, losing a long-held position can be devastating as older workers often face age-based discrimination and stereotypical views about outdated skills.
A new book by former communications executive James Brian Kerr tells a success story of personal reinvention following job loss. In The Long Walk Home: How I Lost My Job as a Corporate Remora Fish and Rediscovered My Life’s Purpose (Blydyn Square Books), Kerr—who led PR and communications programs at multiple Fortune 500 companies—recounts the day when, shortly before his fifty-sixth birthday, he learned he would be losing his job at the company where he’d worked for nearly twenty-eight years.
Reeling from the news, he leaves his car behind at the office and walks more than twenty miles home. A fifty-minute commute turns into a seven-hour odyssey into the self as the author reflects on why he has stayed so long in a corporate environment where he never really felt at home. His “great letting go” becomes a springboard to reclaim his authentic self from a world intent on bringing us to common sameness.
Kerr, a native of the Philadelphia area, subsequently found another position at a leading fintech company before leaving the corporate world in 2021 to pursue his passion for writing and storytelling. This is his first published book.
Jonathan Clements, former personal finance columnist for the Wall Street Journal and now editor of HumbleDollar, said: “Pick up this book and join the author on a 20-mile journey through depression, faith, corporate downsizing, resilience, Montgomery Mall, cancer, Spatola’s Pizza, divorce and gratitude. And somewhere along the way, amid prose that often verges on poetry, perhaps you’ll find the inspiration to shrug off your shackles and strive for that which matters most to you.”
The book is available in paperback and ebook, and can be purchased on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and directly through the publisher’s website. Based in Kenilworth, NJ, Blydyn Square Books is an independent book publisher dedicated to publishing selected titles that “make people think.”
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Media Contact
Blydyn Square Books eliot@blydynsquarebooks.com 267-223-5106 http://www.blydynsquarebooks.com
