GIVE HIM A BREAK:It seemed a good plan at the height of the Celtic Tiger to accept a severance package and take my chances in a shiny new world, glittering with opportunities. It turned out to be a terrible idea, writes Ferdia Mac Anna.

I have friends who went from college onto the gravy train. In their 20s and early 30s, they shot straight into good jobs. The Young Princes and Princesses of the Celtic Tiger had choices that my generation never had. Until the recent downturn when many of them were suddenly laid off. Some went from 100k a year to the dole. They now find themselves on frantic job-searches, trudging around the dole office and applying for Fás courses. It's a world they never expected to have to deal with. I know how they feel.

Five years ago, I volunteered to take severance. I had worked in the job for a long time and I wanted a change. I believed that I had a range of skills that would get me somewhere in the job market. I was in my late 40s, relatively young and with a lot of professional experience in television, radio, newspapers and magazines.

Or so I thought.

I learned that there are precious few jobs out there for middle-aged blokes. I applied for hundreds of jobs online and by letter and either received polite rejections or in many cases, no response at all. Potential bosses were often a decade or more younger than me and maybe didn't fancy taking on a guy with more experience than they had.

After a while, the realisation dawned on me that quitting my job had perhaps not been the smartest move. OK, so I had made a bad call. I would have to make the best of it.

I went for jobs that were outside my experience. Fine. I had been seeking new challenges.

A careers advisor at the dole office had me interviewed over the phone for a gig as a driver for doctors who needed to make emergency calls at night. Why didn't doctors do their own driving? I was informed that it was safer for them to have drivers, particularly in bad areas, since doctors carry cash and prescription drugs. Safer? Meaning there was a chance that the doctor's driver might wind up as the doctor's bodyguard? Would I need to be trained in self-defence? I had visions of Kung Fu Ferdia saving the doctor's medicine kit from hordes of glassy-eyed junkies.

I got offered a position as a lamplighter (at least, I think that was the job description). The duties involved driving around in the small hours to report streetlamps that were on the blink. Initially, it struck me as strangely appealing, even romantic to cruise the city streets by night checking on banjaxed street lights. Like being in your own Film Noir.

Bashed-in bulbs on Benburb Street. Roger That.

Four of the Five Lamps in Fairview are flickering. Help is on the way.

Lopsided lamp-post in Lucan. Stay calm and await reinforcements.

However, the guy in charge read my CV and told me I was overqualified. What on earth did I think I was doing? Besides, the money was small and the hours were long.

I took a temporary position as a market researcher. The job involved knocking on front doors, asking people to fill in forms. At the first house, the door was opened by a man wearing strong glasses who sighed when he saw my clipboard. I made a mandatory identification announcement. "Hello, my name is Mac Anna and I am market research executive for this area."

"Congratulations," Strong Glasses said dryly before shutting the door. My gig as a market research executive lasted one day.

Sometimes, at job interviews or in Fás offices, I met people I knew. A former acquaintance shook my hand and beamed. "Well, well, how the mighty have fallen." He seemed hugely pleased to find himself equally unemployable. Perhaps it is a particularly Irish trait to find joy in misfortune.

Sometimes, my kids asked what I did for a living. I had no ready answer. I told them I did a lot of things but I didn't have one job in particular, although being a dad was important, despite being unpaid.

My wife gave it a positive spin by saying I had a portfolio career - nobody would probably ever give me a decent job again.

I checked out various Return to College Schemes and Start Your Own Business Courses. I discovered that I had difficulty understanding some of the options. Nice, patient Fás people explained the details but that only left me more confused. My confidence drained. It's tough to gain a perspective on things when you feel like a reject, a left-behind, a loser, an eejit. And when you've only got one income to pay a two-income mortgage.

For a long time, I identified with the Kevin Spacey character from American Beauty, willing to take any job that carried minimum responsibility. It wasn't like starting over. It was like going backwards. I contemplated all sorts of menial jobs. I developed an irrational hatred of all gainfully employed people under 50. I considered emigrating. Poland, perhaps.

At the peak of the Celtic Tiger, going solo seemed like a reasonable risk.

Now, I'm back in TV as a freelance, and also holding down a casual gig as a lecturer. It's going well at the moment, but the freelance world is precarious and I am continuing to explore options.

In a recession it's particularly hard to re-invent oneself. You have to work at it.