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Several men were starting their weekend early, relaxing in the dark confines of an upscale gentlemen's club. Greeting them as they came and went on a recent Friday afternoon was Michael Precker, perhaps the only guy ever to graduate from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, work as a Middle Eastern correspondent, win an award from the Association for Women Journalists, and then work the door at a Dallas strip club.

Manager, chief bottle washer, and "writer in residence" have been his job titles at The Lodge for the past two years, ever since he walked away from daily journalism at The Dallas Morning News.

"I had never spent a nickel in a club like this," Precker said. "I'm an old, boring, married person."

Now he's doing everything from arranging lap dances for customers to picking up dancers at the airport to tending bar to mopping up spilled drinks.

Recessions can turn lives topsy-turvy. Careers can ricochet off adversity in all kinds of directions.

Many folks who have lost their jobs in recent months have found other positions in their same line of work or had to find stopgaps to pay the rent. But others who have found themselves unemployed or who, like Precker, saw layoffs coming up in their rearview mirror have taken a chance and shaped totally new careers. "A lot of people are looking at their unemployment as a way to reinvent themselves," said one local career counselor.

Look no further than Lynn Chilson. The former NASA rocket scientist is merging his corporate experience with a lifelong fascination with spirituality, developing a leadership seminar program, and calling himself the "corporate shaman."

A local veteran news photographer is now helping sell wigs for cats. You read that right. Wigs for cats.

Welcome to the 2000s, when self-makeover decisions that may look a little crazy to outsiders are sometimes necessary to keep workers sane and put bread on the table.

Gentlemen's clubs and kitty wigs are just a few of the shelters that workers have found to get themselves out of the current economic storm. With a national unemployment rate of 10 percent (and Texas unemployment at 8 percent, a 22-year high), plenty of people are finding no jobs at all. And even though there are indicators that the recession may be bottoming out, thus far the upswing has been what the experts call a jobless recovery: better for bankers and business owners, maybe, but with not much to cheer about yet for the unemployed.

Some of those who have a little cushion to fall back on or a still-employed spouse are using the downtime to go back to school and learn new skills -- or perhaps stay in school longer. Job placement rates for college grads have dropped 22 percent in the past year, said Sherri Mata, career services director at Texas Wesleyan University.

Mata and others recommend that job seekers take a hard look at their skills and think about new ways to apply them. They should also consider taking an "interest inventory" to determine where to refocus, she said.

"The first thing is determine what it is they want to do," Mata said. "My second step would be to research those careers and see if they are in demand, how much they pay, what kind of tasks are done on a daily basis, and what kind of skills and knowledge they need."

Finding a job without experience means convincing potential employers that one set of work skills is transferable to other jobs. Fields in which workers are still in demand right now include counseling, social work, corrections, law enforcement, information technology, healthcare, and graphic arts.

"Some of those will require specific degrees, and many people will have to go back to school to get those certifications and licenses," she said.

Debby Kratky at Workforce Solutions for Tarrant County has seen many instances of layoffs leading to reinvention, resulting in greater career satisfaction. "It's born of necessity but oftentimes leads to the type of career that is going to make those people happy in the long run," she said.

Updating resumés, seeking career counseling, attending job fairs, and, of course, networking are crucial.  Reinventing oneself takes all that and more, including a sense of excitement. "If you are passionate about doing something, you are going to do it," Mata said. "You'll be motivated and determined."

Jill Johnson is passionate about animals and photography. So when she took a voluntary buyout and left the Fort Worth Star-Telegram during the industry's downturn, she found a way to combine those passions.

Still, she said, "I never thought in a million years I'd be taking pictures of cats in wigs."

Not many cats are named Rooster, and fewer still are content to let someone put wigs on them and take pictures as they lounge on the couch. But Johnson's 7-year-old rescue cat sat still for a good 10 minutes on a recent afternoon while she draped him in colorful hairpieces and captured his varying moods, quizzical expressions, and sultry glances. Meow, indeed.

For 12 years, Johnson rushed to fires, car wrecks, and floods to snap pictures for the next day's newspaper editions. But by about 2005, a recession combined with an outdated business model had put the newspaper industry and many other kinds of news organizations into such a steep decline that it's hard for many to see how they will survive. Newspapers across the country started laying off or offering buyouts to a vast number of editors, writers, and photographers, and they haven't stopped yet. Paper Cuts, a web site created by St. Louis Post-Dispatch staffer Erica Smith to track job losses in the industry, reports more than 14,000 buyouts and layoffs at U.S. newspapers thus far in 2009. The previous year's numbers were about the same. Several hundred of those jobs were cut at the Star-Telegram, Morning News, and other smaller newspapers in North Texas.

"I'm still surprised so many kids are in J-school, especially when I see good journalists jumping into other industries," Smith recently told FishbowlLA, a Los Angeles-based blog about media and the creative community.