Cursing In The Dressing Room

"Clean shirt, new shoes
And I dont know where I am goin to.
Silk suit, black tie,
I dont need a reason why.
They come runnin just as fast as they can
Coz every girl crazy bout a sharp dressed man."

— ZZ Top - Sharp Dressed Man

"Fuck. FUCK. FUUUUUUUUCK."

I hear the Dressing Room Lady outside the door.

"Everything okay in there?"

I sigh.

"No... Yes."

This is the third pair of pants I have tried on, and the fourth or fifth shirt.

It's right at Six O'Clock and the place closest to here that cuts hair on Mondays (because strangely most barber shops here are closed on Mondays) closes at 8 O'Clock.

I still have to shave this beard off.

I don't have shoes that will go with whatever I end up buying that I am currently trying on in this stupid dressing room at this stupid store that doesn't make freakin' clothes that actually fit my...I'm guessing, totally freakish and awkwardly built body.

Sorry, I've gone and got a little ahead of myself. I'm in the middle of the PRE-INTERVIEW JITTERS.

I don't wear what I call "dress-up clothes." I appreciate the whole Mad Men aesthetic of tailored suits and bespoke shirts, but I can't put it any more clearly that my ideal mode of dress is a t-shirt of some sort along with blue jeans or shorts. Original, I know, but it let's me put absolutely zero thought into what I'm wearing so that I can focus on what I'm doing.

Anyway, today I care. I'm trying on dress shirts.

I am attempting to find a proper pair of fucking khakis.

After nearly giving myself an anxiety ridden panic attack trying to find clothes for what, in my head, will essentially be a quick trip to a footstool covered in thumbtacks in front of a What's Your Line panel of people who hate me upon sight, I finally settle on a pair of proper light brown pants and a white and blue checked button-up.

I can't pay for it quick enough. My wife wanted to look at some things in the ladies section of the store but my interview is first thing in the morning and I have to get my hair cut so I am freaking. My stomach is in knots.

The kid checking us out has to call his manager because I have a coupon. Of course I have a coupon. Of course it doesn't work.

The manager takes care of it. I pay. We are going towards the car. "Don't run off on me!" my wife says. I look back and she's five feet behind me. I am unaware I have ran off towards the car in a power-walking sprint (of which, in the spirit of transparency, I am accused of often. What? I'm tall.) and have a mission. HAIR CUT.

Ten minutes later we're at the barber shop. I go inside and the girl at the counter asks me for my phone number. The last four digits. I give her what I think I gave them last time (I've changed numbers a few times for various reasons) and it pulls up nothing. I give another number, and it's the wrong name.

"That's not me." I say.

"Well who are you?" She says.

"Well...I'm me."

"What's your phone number?"

"Can't you just make a new person on there with my new number?"

"No, I don't want to. What's your phone number?"

At this point I want to scream "I hate you and I just want a motherfucking haircut, bitch." but instead of that I give her my full name and she pulls up a number I didn't even think about as my phone number.

I still am not really sure why I even have to give a phone number to give a haircut, but whatever.

A few minutes later I'm in the chair.

A few minutes after that I'm out the door with a lighter wallet and am off to Wal-Mart.

I point out that "That's a lot of gray hair on the floor."

The lady who cut my hair says "Everyone says that."

It was a lot of gray.


After Wal-Mart, my wife tells me it's all going to be okay. She's said this several times tonight but I am less than half a day from the thing I hate most. Being judged on who I am, in tiny cereal box form where they just see the cover and maybe read the ingredients, but don't really know what I am, or what I can do, or if I'm even crunchy in milk.

It will be okay, she says. I want to trust her.

We get home, and groceries are put away. Everything in it's right place. Food in the fridge and the pantry. Toiletries to the bathroom and all that. New clothes off the hangers and all put in their final resting place.

On me.

I actually look okay.

My wife tells me to come out and she sees me. "You look really good. I told you you would."

She then tells me I freak out too much. Guilty as charged.

A belt ties it all together. My dog is giving me that smile. She must be thirsty.

I go to bed early but not before setting every alarm in the house in staggered times so that I don't sleep in like I have the last few months.

Today I had my interview, and I feel pretty confident that I killed at it.

Everyone was laughing at my jokes, and giving eye contact, and seemed genuinely interested. Out of hundreds of applicants I was one of only a few they asked to come in.

Cross yer fingers. I want to be writing Employed Files sooner than later.

And if you're in the same situation, for the love of god: Don't Freak Out.

Pre-cursor audioblog I did yesterday

Drenched To The Bone

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

— Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changin'

With enough distance it all makes sense.

You serve your meager purpose, and subject yourself and those close to you to your routine. You have your insecurities, and if you're secure enough about yourself to show them you ask questions. Or if you're insecure enough to need approval, you do the same.

It is a thankless world. For those that need recognition, morale boosting, friendship and camaraderie, work isn't the place for it. Not anymore. Not by any standard that could be considered realistic. Not by the needs of anyone who needs anything.

I will admit it. I'm a needy person. I put up walls. I played misdirection with the best of them. If a chink in my armor was to be made apparent, what better thing to do than bring up a weakness that someone else had. They don't know this. They can't do that. None of it mattered.

I spent the majority of a career glad-handing to be in a position and the rest of it struggling, fighting, to stay in my spot. Did I earn where I was? Sure. I am talented, or a lot of people with no personal stake in how I feel wouldn't tell me so. Was I well liked? That's not really something I can accurately say given my predilection for deprecation. I am told occasionally that I am missed at my former place of employment. That it "just isn't the same" without my presence.

I suppose the same could be said of the communal stapler. Right?

In hindsight it is all a strategic game. Legitimacy is something you strive for. To be seen as a legitimate authentic relic of a time gone by when people had balls and could do what they said they would do. I would argue points I thought were valid. I would chastise those that were ignorant when I felt it was warranted. I would commiserate with my colleagues about those that were daft, and out of touch, and maybe useless, and probably getting paid more than the rest of us were for no apparent reason.

I was one of the grunts, the cast-offs, the worker-bee's. The Peons.

I would occasionally let my ill-advised (now) attempts at climbing the ladder up to the glass ceiling happen. When in the company of the higher-ups I would let slip carefully crafted half-truths to see what would happen. To see where it would take me. I remember fondly e-mailing a catchphrase spewing, corporate book devouring "company savior" that was formerly President of a major Cable TV network an e-mail vaguely pointing out how excited I was about "new procedures" that we had in place and how pumped I was about "our opportunities to discover new ways to strategize, synergize our teams" and "come to new ways to maximize ROI (return on investment) and to capitalize on what we already had in place. "

He e-mailed me a very positive reply a few days later saying that he would be very interested in sitting and talking with me as I had the right outlook that the company needed and that our company needed "more positive thinkers like me."

I was so very frustrated. I had e-mailed him the equivalent of verbal corporate catchprhase diarrhea and he'd eaten every drop up and probably licked his fingers clean before asking for seconds. I'd said nothing. Seriously. I could look back on it now and have no clue what I even was attempting to say, but I do remember laughing as I sent it, telling my wife "I'm either going to get a raise for this bullshit or I'm going to get fired."

Click. Send. Praise.

Shake your head and carry on. This is what you're dealing with now.

The last two years were a blur. All the inroads I had made in my years at my workplace were being squandered by the monkey business of the new regime in charge. I didn't know the new bosses and living many states away would rarely get the chance to meet them without the local higher-up rats sniveling about looking for a way to stay on the ship.

I made a decision shortly after I had a realization.

The quick ride to the top was over, and there is nothing to do but stay my ground.

Stay my ground and stare at the fork in the road. Weasel's way out or Legitimacy. For whatever Legitimacy is worth, anymore.

I saw and see what the weasel's of the world do. They might make more money, but they have more people wanting to meet them in a dark alley with the business end of a tire iron, too.

I can't live that way. I won't live that way. I couldn't live that way.

"Yes Men" get the raise and the pat on the back. Honest Men get told they are a budget cut that had to be taken.

I regret nothing. I am not ashamed of what I did while I was there. Part of my life under the roof of that job was self-preservation. The other, realer later half was, in hindsight, an act of retribution. Asking the hard questions, and standing for what I believed and not putting up with lies, and pettiness, and ignorance, and refusing to say "Yes" without actually meaning it.

I saw a good friend of mine who was highly praised for his dedication and skill at his profession derided for complaining and essentially treated like shit and pushed from his post for wanting to be treated like a human.

I saw another friend of mine, one of the more talented scribes I've ever had the chance to know personally told that his award winning work "just wasn't enough."

I took pride at a job that I wasn't particularly interested in, and gained skills in a part of my profession that I'd never wanted to be a part of, and made a stand for quality in the face of a "just get it over with, no one cares" attitude only to realize that the people in charge:

1. Don't know what quality is, and wouldn't if it hit them in the face.
2. Don't care about your attention to detail, because they don't have any attention to detail.
3. Couldn't care less what they're doing, as long as they make money. Period.
4. If you are talented at your work and actually make money, you will someday be pushed aside for a younger, less talented version of you -- but it doesn't matter to them because they can rest on their laurels (aka The Work You Did Long Ago) and save money.
   

Don't get me wrong, I like money. Partially.

But sometimes I sit back and wonder, why exactly no one seems to take real tangible pride in their work anymore. Why they don't spend the time, researching the past, seeing what worked and what didn't, no matter what their profession, and try their best to blend old and new, making something special, that hopefully someone in the future will see and go "This...this is the good stuff." I am addicted to the craft of essentially anything. I like to know why things work the way they do.

I don't expect to be famous. I'm not the best at anything. Not even close.

I'd just like one person, somewhere, to stumble across something I did, many years from now, and wonder who I was, what I was like, and how I ever came up with the things that I worked on.

They won't know that after amassing a library of work that was praised by colleagues I respect and people I'll never meet that I was just a social security number that was taken off of a ledger by some anonymous accountant because my supervisor wouldn't take the time to think twice about what he was doing.

When I hear bad news about them, it pleases me. But it doesn't matter at the end of the day.

I'm where I am. They're where they are. Who's right? Who feels justified? Who knows.

Pride is a stupid thing, but sometimes it can be a very important thing.

I am proud of who I am and what I do. I am proud of the work I do. I am proud of my wife, and I am humbled that she gives me the time of day, much less loves me. I am proud I have made it as far as I have in this life. I am proud that the news from the day of my firing was that most of the people I'd worked with the last seven years were shocked and scared, because if "I was let go...anyone could be let go."

I hope they're not. I wouldn't wish the uncertainty I live in daily on anyone.

I am proud, however, that I am handling it like I am. I am fighting and I am trying and I will try to balance the scales of craft vs. work.

I will keep swimming until I sink like a stone.

Anyone even notice we haven't been updating?

Thought the Wednesday's guest post was very good and chock-full of tips and tricks for the newly Unemployed person that I'd leave it up on top an extra day. As for myself, I've working on some actual projects that might make me some money! So I might miss a day or two occasionally. The whole "posting everyday" thing was a little ambitious, anyway, without me giving up my actual identity and all the juicy details. Which ain't gonna happen.

If you did notice we were not updating yesterday, give us a comment and let us know. Otherwise we'll start thinking that no one cares, and hell, we might just abandon the site. So if you like what you've seen so far, let our anonymous keesters know it. Not only are we out of work but we're attention starved and crave your feedback as much as we do our unemployment checks.

We'll be back soon! Make sure to follow us on Twitter and RSS!

-U.F.

U.F. GUEST POST: Pragmatic Tips for Being Laid Off

[EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first guest post here at the Unemployed Files by a good friend of ours. If you have a tale of unemployment, or tips for those that are unemployed, feel free to send it in to us here. Thanks!]

I know the author of Unemployed Files and he offered to post an article that I wrote. I normally don’t do this sort of thing but I feel like I have a lot of good advice to spread. Like the author, I was recently a victim of The Second Coming of the Great Depression. The author is very creative and that is his talent. My main talent is being a planner and being organized. Even though I try to be creative and funny, I just never quite got he hang of it since I got a C in Humor for Engineers in college.

Resumes

Everyone knows that the resume is the foundation of the job search. There are many different kinds of resumes out there and here is the biggest thing about resumes: if you talk to 10 different people about resumes, you’ll get 10 different answers on what to put on them. I’m not going to expound upon that stuff because I’ll just be the 11th different answer that you hear and I’m just some idiot on the Internet. However, hear are some things that I do know:

• Be confident in your resume. It represents you and others may have different opinions about your resume. Learn to know when to take their advice and when to stick to your guns about your resume.
• Your resume should be in .doc Word format. Yes, I know that there is the new fangled .docx Word format, but there are still lots of people out there running older versions of Office that don’t have the compatibility packs installed either. You could also save your resume in PDF format, but I prefer .doc since almost every computer can edit Word documents. Also, this is your primary version of your resume and should be formatted properly and be pretty and everything.
• After I have a pretty, formatted version of my resume, I then create a plain text version of it. Here is the thing though. I still keep it in a .doc format. I just take my pretty resume and then convert everything to a 12pt Courier font without any kind of special stuff such as bold, italiacs, underlined, etc. Also, EVERYTHING is aligned to the left side. I don’t change the information at all; just the formatting. This really helps because you never know when you are going to need to copy and paste your resume into a job submission site and then you’ll have to deal with mucking around with it. Do it once at the beginning and be done with it.
• Next step is a Google Docs version of your resume. Here is why. You may already be using Google Docs which is great. Then, just share your resume with everyone in the world. After this, go to http://tinyurl.com/ and create a custom URL for GD resume. You can actually create a custom URL such as http://tinyurl.com/uf-resume/ which then points to your GD resume. The reason for this is that the GD resume is something like docs.google.com/View=id?th3oue_UP86x456ou3 which isn’t easy for someone to type in. For this resume, I just copy my plain text resume into here and then do a few things such as bolding stuff, but it is essentially my PT resume.
• Next up is LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a social networking site focused on the professional environment. The way that I describe it is LinkedIn is for the 9-5 professional crowd where you want to get business done, Facebook is for the happy hour type of crowd where you go to have a bit of fun and unwind, and MySpace is the dirty area of town on the other side of the tracks where you go at 2am when a “good idea” suddenly becomes a bad one. There are many different things to utilized LinkedIn for your job search. For one, you can link to a website. How, but you already have a website. OK, it isn’t a website, but you do have a TinyURL that points to your resume. Also, under your experience, post the highlights from your resume there. You have to be picky because a Word document really isn’t limited in size but I think the LinkedIn Experience section is limited to something like 2500 characters. I also copy this from my plain text resume.
• If you are a creative type, definitely have a web-based portfolio of your work so that it is easy to see. With everyone, including my grandmother, on the Internet these days, it is important to utilize Internet resources for your job hunt.

Business Cards



You never know when a networking opportunity is going to come up. Hell, I’ve traded business cards with another customer at the mechanic before. This is usually something that people forget until it is too late, but they are pretty easy to get. You could use an online service that has free business cards such as http://vistaprint.com/ which I’ve heard good things about. You could also print your own if you have a decent printer at home. You go to an office supply store and they have templates for business cards. I use one made by Avery that has clean edges, a nice linen texture, and can be printed on both sides. The pros of creating your own business cards are you can download business card templates online, edit it however you like, and then print them whenever you want. The cons are that getting things lined up perfectly when you print them can be an exercise in futility.



The information that is critical on a business card are name, title/position that you are seeking, phone number, and email address. Also, you know that TinyURL thing that we created earlier that links to your GD resume? I think that is critical as well. Remember that the resume is the foundation to your job search and it is pretty cool to tell people that they can easily find your resume from your business card. Or if you have a portfolio website, you can just link to that as well. In this day and age, I don’t think address is needed anymore on a business card unless you have a physical business somewhere. You could put a catchy phrase describing yourself on there as well, but I’ll leave that up to you.



Once you do have business cards, the most important thing is to actually keep them on you at all times. I usually have about 5 or so in my wallet because you never know when something like this will come up. Yes, you could trade phone numbers with a business contact, but then you have another person in your phonebook with about 400 other people in there. A business card is a physical reminder of your meeting. And another piece of advice, if you get a business card, immediately flip it over and write a few details about the meeting such as date, setting, and what you talked about. It’ll be easier to remember that meeting later on.



Networking



You aren’t going to find your next job on Dice.com, Monster.com, or one of the hundreds of others job sites out there. And as most people know, most of the responses you get are spam or people offering opportunities to own your own business by selling insurance. You need to be proactive about networking. Find out any networking opportunities in your area. Always have business cards with you as well and if you think you’ll have enough business cards, then double the number that you bring with you. Practice at having a 15 second to 2 minutes spiel about yourself, what you are looking for, and what you are great at. You need to have this sales pitch about yourself done well rehearsed as well. The key is to also present yourself as how you can help your future employer/clients instead of what you are looking for. Present it as a way that they would benefit from having you employed.



I’ve been to a few recruiting events lately and here are a few other tips that I’ve learned that many others don’t do. I bring a small padfolio that isn’t fancy, but on the inside, I have plenty of business cards, a pad of paper and pen, as well as a copy of my formatted resume. It isn’t for people to take, but in case anyone is interested in my resume, I can say “Well, I happen to have a copy here with me. Would you like to take a quick look at it now?” If someone has a great piece of advice or a company that is hiring, I write it down immediately in my padfolio. Also, if someone doesn’t have business cards, you can have them write down their info in your padfolio as well. And the most important thing is to follow up with people afterwards within a day or two.



Networking is going to be how you find your next job and you need to be proactive and prepared to increase your chances of finding your next position.



Interviewing/Prep



Here is another topic where there are 10 different answers if you ask 10 different people and I admit that I hate interviewing. It’s crap because you have to pretend to be someone you aren’t and that is just tough for me to do, but the most important thing to do is to focus on your strengths. You can mention your weaknesses but only in passing and mention that you are working on them. The most common type of interview questions are behavioral interview questions where they ask you to describe a situation where the sky was falling and how you saved the day. If you’ve been out of work for a while or you are trying to think of an answer for an off the wall question, you’re going to stumble upon the answers which is not good. This is where you can do some homework no matter for which interview you do.



Go online and find all types of behavioral questions online. There are millions of them. You’ll quickly find out that they boil down to three to maybe five general types of questions or situations. This is good because this is easier to handle. Now, use the S-A-R technique from your past experiences. In short, this technique is where you describe a Situation, then your Actions in that situation, and then the Result of that situation. By using this technique with your experiences, actually write down some of your situations that you could potentially use to answer these behavioral interview questions. Also, think of experiences that aren’t specifically on your resume. Of all the points on my resume, I have just as many talking points that I use in an interview that I’ve practiced.



Once you start writing down your experiences using the S-A-R technique, you’ll see how one situation can apply to one type of behavioral question and another situation can apply to a different type. By doing this, it will really help you to figure out some of the things that you’ve done in the past. It’ll refresh your memory and it is great practice prep for an interview. You will want to focus on your strengths as I mentioned before. And if you write them down, you’ll have something to review later when you have an actual interview. And the biggest thing that employers want to hear is about how you can benefit their company, not how their company can benefit you.



Other



Finally, here are some general thoughts that I’ve discovered that’ll help when you lose your job and are looking for a new one. Stick with your schedule. If you are used to going to bed at 11pm and getting up at 7am, do that. It won’t be such a shock when you go back to work. Stay busy as well. You don’t have to spend 40 hours a week looking for a job, but keep yourself occupied by doing stuff. Actually, use this as an opportunity to do something that you would never do. Get a part time job somewhere where there are a lot of people. You could use this as a networking opportunity as well as long as you have plenty of business cards with you. You know what areas you are weak in. Work on them while you have the time. If you don’t have coding skills, take a class at a community college or teach yourself. If you aren’t organized, go clean out your filing cabinet or that stack of papers on your desk that is your version of a filing cabinet. Put things in their proper place and realize how much better it is to be organized. Work on some missing skills. A lot of the positions that I’m looking for require Visio and MS Project experience and I’ve been teaching myself those applications over the last few weeks. Or do something off the wall like volunteering somewhere.



Losing your job can be very traumatic and it is for most people, but it doesn’t have to be. You can be very proactive about finding your next job and it’ll take a lot of work, but the more work that you do now, the quicker that you’ll find your next job. And as I said at the first part of this article, I’m a planner. And I always plan for a rainy day. Hopefully, you’ll learn a lot from this and you will be better prepared because this isn’t likely the last time that you’ll lose your job. Have an emergency fund on hand and have a plan on what things can be cut from your budget if you have to. This isn’t the end of the world because billions of people before you have lost their job and they all have found a way to survive. And you can too.

New Rules and Old Cliches

Most days, once you get deeper into multiple weeks of being without work, you fail to realize what day it is, at least in my case. I go in and out of this state of thought. Sometimes I am still aware of what is going on. Somethings I neglect the calendar almost willfully. For those of you who do know what day it is, and I am one of you, sometimes, I have found that there are better days and worse days to be an Unemployed person.

Mondays are the worst. I used to like Mondays, because I'm weird like that. I was the same way in school. I got bored or wanted to talk to people I liked at work or at school and was always looking forward to seeing the people, not necessarily the work, every Monday. (That feeling usually subsided every Monday about an hour after I got there.)

But for all of you, here is Monday: Everyone gets up, and gets stuck in traffic, and has a "case of the Mondays" and then gets on Facebook, or Twitter, or Myspace or whatever and complains about "THE WEEKEND WAS TOO SHORT AND IT'S MONDAY AGAIN!!!"

Meanwhile, I'm waking up at the crack of noon, checking my e-mail and answering machine to find that no one has been back in touch with me regarding the 50+ applications I've sent out in the last week only to stumble across you bitching that you have a job and *gasp!* -- have to be there with your co-workers.

Forgive me if I don't openly weep for your fortune. You leave me a bit on the icy side when I hear you counting down the days to the weekend, or complaining that there's a full week of work in your future.

Take it from the man who has a weekend day, everyday. It's not what it's cracked up to be.

I'd like to propose a new rule: No complaining about your job, or complaining about having to be at your job until this recession is over and people can actually get work again.

Most of the people probably reading your Facebook status message that you're posting (while you're at work) are probably the ones sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring saying they can come to an interview and be told they're overqualified, anyway.

Think of it this way: In return for you biting your tongue and keeping your (widely shared) displeasure of being back at work to yourself, warm your hearts at the fire of the fact that while you must keep quiet, at least you didn't have to sit for four hours at the Unemployment Office playing "That Game" where you spend your time watching the lady that keeps walking around the room in concentric circles, muttering about God-knows-what, wearing flip-flops while her nasty-ass feet look like she just got finished laying out ten miles of hot tar on the interstate with the road crew and wondering if she's just a freak show or if she's just jacked to the gills on booze or if she's gonna ride that bathtub meth high and jam that nail file in her two foot stack of pamphlets and loose-leaf notebook paper she's carrying under her arm in some unsuspecting jerk's neck, remodeling you with arterial spray.

FRIDAY is probably the best day to be Unemployed. It's the easiest day to blend in amongst people wearing their "Casual Friday" uniforms and heck, you can even act like you're getting ready for the big weekend by spouting cliched B.S. to anyone whose eyes are frantically darting around the room waiting to hear something they recognize. The world of those who currently work and those who used to work collide and for a brief smattering of hours we are all one again. There is hope and love and we're all wearing embarrassing shorts and t-shirts while racing around to do as much or as little as we can.

Sundays are disappointing. There is no more pleasure in lazing about, enjoying a morning in bed, doing whatever you want when every single day of your life is like the weekend. It's probably better to just get up and get on with your day. What's even worse is more than likely, it will be the day you have a craving for Chik-Fil-A. So, thanks for that you pious-assed-delicious-chicken-cooking-sons-a-bitches.

**ahem**

You have the information you need to know which days are good and which aren't for the Unemployed. Do with it what you will. "The More You Know!" and all that. Consider it a life lesson.

Know this: For every "TGIF!" or "Thank God It's Friday!" or "Only 2 more days til the weekend!" I see, I'm going to respond with a "Only no more minutes til I am totally nappin', sucker" or whatever it is that I know you would rather actually be doing. Then to spite you, I will actually go do it.

Also, on a more serious note: Thank Whoever That It's Any Day. You didn't wake up dead today. Congratulations. You have a steady paycheck? Even better! There are things to rejoice about and they are all around you all the time. I am breathing. I am eating. I wake up and I go to sleep. I am alive. You are, too. I laugh, and I love and I am me and I am out there, doing my thing, whether you realize it or not.

Work is just money, y'all. Don't let it ruin your week or dictate your mood.

I'm working on that rule myself, and I'll let you know how it goes.

Chairman of the Bored

"Countin' flowers on the wall
That don't bother me at all
Playin' solitaire till dawn with a deck of fifty-one
Smokin' cigarettes and watchin' Captain Kangaroo
Now don't tell me I've nothin' to do

— The Statler Brothers, "Flowers on the Wall"

After a few weeks, the novelty of being home all the time wears off. You break your old habits, and start forgetting things that don't matter anymore. You start asking yourself questions like "What the hell is a timesheet?" and wonder why anyone would waste time out of their productive day to do something as asinine as to tell someone else what they'd been working on all day. To me, that would seem counter-productive. You forget about that. It just doesn't make sense, so it's wiped from your memory banks.

The job hunt is going slow. You keep seeing contradictory reports on the news saying that unemployment is going down, or that it's going back up. That things will be okay by mid-year NEXT YEAR. You send in your requisite three resumes a week to satisfy your Unemployment requirements and sit waiting by the phone that just...doesn't...ring.

The dog, (remember her?) is now just kind of used to you being home all the time. It's not a big to-do anymore that requires her to have a smiling face or enough of a thing that she gets excited. When she smiles now, you know it's because she wants some water, or to go outside. The cats ignore you, but that's okay, because that's what cats do.


In this economic downturn, (both recession-wise and unemployment-wise) I've become a customer of our local dollar stores. Luckily, the part of town I live in has two. One has good deals on some things I need, and the other has bargains on other items I want. So I split my time between the two when I go out shopping and am friendly with the cashiers at both.

Who knows what they think of me coming in so often, and during the day no less. I'm sure they've noticed the deterioration. I've lost a few pounds since I lost my job. Probably due to not eating out at lunch every day. I've grown out my hair and my beard, just because I can and because it doesn't really make sense to go get a haircut when I'm not making money and I don't really see anyone except for my wife, and the two cashiers at the two local dollar stores.

Perhaps they think of me as a wealthy eccentric who roams the aisles of cheap establishments, constantly on the prowl for tchotchkes and trinkets and the recently faded trends of the last year.

I'll take "Low-rent Howard Hughes" all day long, for the record.

More than likely, I don't even get noticed. Or maybe they think I'm just another asshole that comes into their stupid little store and buys things and floats out into the customer ether or wherever all those people that pass by the register mosey off to.

I think about all of this (and everything else) too much, because I have entered the stage following "FREEDOM" called "BOREDOM."

Freedom is the best stage to be in because your optimism is at an all-time high. You are positive that what has happened is a good thing and that you have nothing to lose and nowhere to go but straight up to the top! It's all going to be okay and nothing can stop you! You get to sleep late, and stay up late, and do anything you want to do anytime you want to!

The dog used to "smile" at me because she was excited I'm home.

I'm fairly sure I saw her just roll her eyes at me today. Nothing like a sarcastic canine.

Things change. Deal with it and move on. This, too, shall pass.

Your freedom becomes a burden. You run out of ideas of things you can go do. Or you run out of things that are feasible for you to do, because, well, you're out of work and can't just go on vacation or fly somewhere.

Another downside of your "freedom" is that the work that conveniently got in the way of the things you didn't want to do around the house is no longer there as an excuse. Or, you can look at it as an chance to finally do all the things you have been needing to do forever. It's all in how you look at it, I suppose.

John Lennon once said that "Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans."

Sometimes life is what's happening while you don't have any plans.

And that's okay.

"I've been traveling on a boat and a plane
In a car on a bike with a bus and a train
Traveling there, traveling here
Everywhere. in every gear

But, oh Lord, we pay the price
With the spin of the wheel, with the roll of the dice
Ah yeah, you pay your fare

And if you don't know where you're going
Any road will take you there"

— George Harrison "Any Road"

How The Schedule Is Going To Work At U.F.

Chuckle if you must, but I will be taking the weekends off here at U.F. On the occasion that I receive a story from someone that isn't myself, if I think it's U.F. material I'll post it here on the weekends, but for now, you can just check out what's happened in the previous week, and I will be back with more on Monday!

Thanks for reading the site, and for (hopefully) letting your friends know about it!

Have a great weekend. Make sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook!

-A Person

I'll Tell You Anything 'Cept The Truth

WANTED: Designer. Must know Photoshop, Illustrator, inDesign, and be highly creative and capable of working without supervision.

Well, that's me to a tee! Full of optimism, hope and vigor I quickly get in touch with who I envision will be my new boss as soon as I get the chance to meet him face-to-face.

A personal website is put together quickly, fully loaded with an "About Me" page and a full-blown Resume, and even a mighty big Portfolio of a lot of the really cool things I've done in my career so far. Photos I've taken from across the country, Print layouts, Web layouts, Logos, Branding, you name it. Hand illustrated stuff, and band logos. It's a slam dunk!

Potential new boss tells me to get in touch with him soon. I shoot him an e-mail, he's kind of busy, but we need to get together. When is good for me? Well...anytime is good for me. I don't have anything to do.

Two weeks later, an interview! The night before, hell, for a week before it, I'm a ball of nervous energy. I go buy nice new clothes for the meeting. I even shave off my "post-work" beard. I go and get a haircut. The night before I can't even sleep. I'm so sure this is going to be awesome and fast and I'm going to get this job immediately and I'm going to be back on track in no time with a new job and insurance and all the things I'd taken for granted before. Plus these guys seemingly do really awesome stuff! I'm excited to say the least.

The meeting is for 9:00 a.m. the next morning. I'm up at 5 a.m., easy.

I get all gussied up and out the door about 7:30 for what is ostensibly a 15 minute drive. Now, by normal human mathematics, you'd estimate that I'd show up for my 9:00 o'clock meeting at around 7:45 or so. But in the weary unemployed travelers mindset, there could be traffic. You don't want to be late do you? You've been in traffic before on this interstate for hours that one time four years ago when that tractor trailer truck wrecked.... What if that same drive had had time to recuperate...and got his Commercial Driver's License back in that four year time period, and just happened to flip his truck again, on this...the day you don't need it to happen! Oh God, at this rate I'll never get there!

Rationality is not a strong point for a man who is in search of what he wants.

So, I pull up in the parking lot of the place I'm going at 7:50 a.m. A full hour and ten minutes before my scheduled meeting-slash-informal interview. Is it even really an interview? He said he wanted to meet with me...he never said interview. Oh, man. What have I done...am I overdressed? CRAP.

I listen to the radio in my car. It's hot, so I keep it running so the air conditioning is on. But I'm unemployed a.k.a. I don't make much money except for my unemployment check, and gas is expensive, so I need to cut the car off. But I don't want to get sweaty. But it's still an hour until I need to go into this building! Okay, maybe I can go in like ten minutes early. That's typical for like...acting auditions right? "On Time is Ten Minutes Early." Well, this isn't acting. Ughhhh....

Okay it's thirty minutes before now. I'm a jumbled mess. I haven't done a job interview in close to a decade. This is not as easy as I thought.

I have his number in my iPhone. I almost call it a few times. Finally with about twenty-five minutes left I give in.

HIM: Hello?

ME: Hey [Potential Boss], This is [Your author] and I just got here in your parking lot. Ran a little faster than I thought, just got here because I thought traffic would be worse than it was.

HIM: Ha! No problem, man. We're upstairs, and through a door and then down the hall all the way and then make a left. You can't miss it.

ME: Sounds good. I will see you in a sec--

HIM: I will warn you...our air conditioner is out, so it's about 85 degrees up here.

ME: Oh[*]... no problem! Will see you in a few.

HIM: Alright then

**CLICK**

"Fuck!"

[*]Okay, a little transparency and disclosure here. When it is hot I get sweaty. I know this is a trait indicative of the human race in general, but in the state I live in it is humid. And hot. I have many times equated the outside atmosphere as an invisible wet blanket rendering any showering you have done, even moments before, completely null and void should you step into it.

So, I've been sitting in my car for about thirty minutes, stressing out. Getting a little bit of a sweat going.

Now I'm exiting the car and walking, in the summer, through an asphalt parking lot, up two levels of outdoor stairs, and into a closed building without a lot of windows that has no air conditioning. I walk into my potential new workplace, and I see the guy I'm supposed to be talking to in our inter-meeting-view. He's on the phone, engrossed in a conversation. (Didn't I just talk to him moments before?) He waves and holds up the 'Hold on a second' finger and I just kind of stand there awkwardly, getting hotter and hotter, and I'm looking around the office.

A few minutes later he comes out and says hi, and I say hi, and he suggests that we go into a communal meeting kind of room with a nice big couch and some stuff they've worked on on the wall and it's pretty cool. Except for it being really hot. I feel sweat going down my neck and back. The shirt on me feels like it's been hit by a water sprinkler...

HIM: So tell me a little about yourself...

ME: Um, well, ...sorry, it's been a while since I've done one of these. I've been working for the same place the last seven years until a week or two ago.

HIM: No worries, we're just talking. I'll tell you some of the stuff that we do... (and he goes through a list of cool projects and things that they do, which is mostly website based, and with a little bit of apparel stuff, but it all seems like stuff I can design for.)

ME: That all sounds awesome! I've done lots of stuff like that for print, and for the web. I've done a bunch of television stuff too if you guys were ever wanting to go that way.

HIM: That's all pretty exciting. Well I liked the samples I saw in your portfolio and my partner is on vacation this week, but we might be able to get you to do some samples, kind of a try-out, for us if you don't mind doing that. We'd pay you for any work you do, of course.

My heart sank. The partner isn't here, so there won't be any getting hired today at least. But that's fine. There's still hope....right?

HIM: So how are you with code?

ME: Code? Like HTML?

HIM: Well, some HTML, mostly CSS and some things like that.

ME: Oh...well, I will just be honest here and say that any of this stuff I've worked on before we usually had a guy who did code, or several guys, and I just strictly designed. But I've worked on huge design stuff and it all really looks great!

HIM: Hmm....well, the position is really needing a coder. Someone who is really good, and I mean really strong at code. Coding is a huge part of what's going on here. Is that something you could learn?

ME: Well, uh...yeah...I guess. I just don't have a lot of experience in that. I did HTML websites back, man...I guess back about ten years ago. But I don't know the CSS stuff. I mean, I could try to learn, but I--

HIM: (standing up) It was really good to meet you today, so here's my card...(hands me a card) Do you have a card?

ME: No, no I don't. (Mental note: DAMN IT.)

HIM: Start learning that code, we'll be in touch.

We shake hands, and I leave. I catch a reflection of myself on the way out and I look like someone who just got dropped into one of those pools after someone threw a softball at a target. I'm drenched in sweat. It is miserable. I walk outside of this place, dejected, a completely unqualified jerk into 90 degree heat and it is somehow cooler than the climate I just came out of, which mentally is resembling a circle of hell at the moment, outlookwise.

I get in the car and make the somehow longer-feeling drive home. I'm second guessing myself, going through the...whatever the hell that was, in my head over and over. Wondering why I was stuttering and stammering. Not pushing my strengths well. Why wasn't this dude impressed? I was a big deal and had tons of people singing my praises at my old gig. People in the industry respect my skills! Dear God, what have I done. I've blown it.

I go home and relay the unmitigated disaster to my wife. She says it can't possibly be as bad as I am telling her it was. Somewhere in the fallout from this abortion of a meeting/interview/whatever it was I'm fairly sure that I admitted responsibility for the Holocaust. I might have choked the guy. It's just getting worse and worse in my head.

Days pass. Soon, it's a week.

The beard is back. Oh boy, is it back. By this point I have completed the barter that invited Fallout 3 into my life. I'm obsessed with this game, which is not really like me at all. I'm not really a gamer. But it is working for me. My focus is there, whether it's the wrong thing to be focused on or not. Otherwise I am going to be depressed about the rejection that is sure to come.

The bouts of insomnia have begun. Gone are the days of the internal 8 a.m. wake-up call. That habit is broken. I wake up around mid-day to 2 p.m. and stay up until around 3, or 4, or let's just tell the truth, about 6 a.m. the next day.

I am the night. I go and sit on the steps of my house and look at stars and wonder about things up there that I can't possibly understand. I realize I don't know code and remember that there are about a billion things down here I don't get either. What I don't know could fill the Grand Fuckin' Canyon at this point.

Then it happens.

*Ding*

YOU HAVE ONE E-MAIL.

I check my mail.

"Man - This week is really getting away from me. And I'm out of town next week.

Let me be honest - I'm concerned about your skillset with css/html development.
Is this something you have been picking up here lately? This really is an essential
part of what we do."

I reply:

"I've learned some. I'm not an expert by any means, but I am learning. If that's a huge pitfall, I understand, I've just never had to deal with the coding side of things before."

I never heard anything back. About two weeks later I saw a twitter post proclaiming they were close to finding a candidate. A few days later they were welcoming the newest employee to their team.

It wasn't me.

I wasn't going to lie to the guy. At this point in my life there are some things that I just won't do that I used to do without blinking an eye. Being dishonest is one of them. If I know something, you'll hear about it. If I don't know something, I'll be the first to admit it. I wasn't going to lie to get this job. I'm not sure I even wanted a "coding" job because I like to design things. That's what I think I'm good at.

Having said all this, I can't help but feel like I was baited in by the idea of getting a job for one thing, and then being told I wasn't qualified for a whole different thing. I realize a business-owner can do things on a whim for whatever reason he or she wants to. Hell, there doesn't even have to be a reason to do things. You can just do it, because it's yours. Maybe I just didn't understand what they wanted, or thought I could adapt to anything.

I'm a casualty of this bait-and-switch system. Not a martyr, just one of the generic bodies coming in, not being able to (under)stand the heat, and feeling relief out on the porch where it's still way too hot to live.

I got worked up for nothing. I went in qualified for one thing, and ended up not ready for something I wouldn't have wanted in the first place. My confidence at this point was down in the hole anyway. Plus I looked like I'd slid down the hallway to his office on a completely soaked Slip N' Slide.

In the immediate following days I send on average, at least two or three resumes and cover letters out a day. I don't ever get a response.

No one said it wasn't going to be confusing out here in the real world. So I look to the virtual world sitting in my videogame console once all the resumes have been sent out for the day and the hours tick away.

I'm starting to notice similarities out here and in this videogame Fallout 3 that I'm playing intermittently when the mood strikes. You aimlessly wander the landscapes...running into people, and little stress filled adventures and missions. You do tiny tasks and get paid small amounts by the inhabitants you do them for. You gain skills and have to learn other things, and ultimately at the climax of all of it you are at your strongest and most skilled. You're a machine doing all the things that you knew you always could. Striving, surviving and fighting the good fight. Providing for yourself and the people you surround yourself with.

You ulimately end up going down a hallway filled with radiation. It's atomic output dwindling your life expectancy down to nothing as you finish the last few steps of your mission and you die right after you've ultimately done the right thing for humankind.

But sometimes you've gotta wonder if a little bit of "Yeah, man...I am really good at code." could have put you on the path to where you want to be quicker.

I don't know that I even want to find out. It would probably eat away at me knowing that the easy path would have been to lie about it and then cram coding information like crazy once I have to prove it.

I am more at ease with myself for just saying "I don't know" rather than going the wrong path.

I hope I feel that way about that decision in a few months.

Reality Cheque

"And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful
Wife
And you may ask yourself-well...how did I get here?"

— Talking Heads / Once in a Lifetime

The Alarm went off everyday at 7:00 a.m. on the dot. Well, it did until the cat threw up on it, but before that the clock was as regular as, well, its namesake. The cat's digestive issues might have been a blessing in disguise, because quite frankly it was getting to me. I wouldn't go through the motions enough to turn it off, or change it. It was just a constant reminder that the repetition that I lived by for the last seven years was no longer part of my routine.

No longer was I getting up at 7:00 a.m. and scrambling out of bed, turning the thing off as a pre-cursor to hitting the shower, putting on clothes, taking out the dog, getting in the car, listening to my obnoxious music that no one else seems to like, sitting in traffic, pulling into my office parking spot, sitting in the car for several minutes working up the strength to drag myself inside anymore...

No, now the routine was to wake up, scramble out of bed, and turn the thing off.

Then I'd stand there, take a deep breath, and wonder why I'd set the thing at all.

Fast-forward one week.

My internal clock is still a jerk. It wakes me up around 8 a.m., letting me know it's time to go do things, and the current thing is let my beard grow and to feel sorry for myself.

My wife, in an effort to make me feel better, let's me know that the dog sure is happy that I'm home more. I look over at the dog and her face tells me that she is happy. Or perhaps, hot and thirsty. I like to be an optimist but I go and fill her water dish just to be on the safe side.

Boom. Internal clock. 8:22 a.m.

Boom. Internal clock. 8:31 a.m.

Boom. Internal clock. 8:16 a.m.

"Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the moneys gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground."

— Talking Heads / Once in a Lifetime

Boom. Internal clock. 7:45 a.m.

Boom. Internal clock. 8:07 a.m.

Boom. Internal clock. 7:51 a.m.

The one thing going in my head every day that nothing is happening except me talking to others that do have jobs about how I feel that my having been let go is unfair, unjust, and just flat out bull shit is nothing.

I read about Ponzi schemes online and wonder where Bernie Madoff screwed up, and wonder how he did as much damage as he did without getting caught earlier. I forget what I was thinking about minutes later. I mentally make the perfect peanut butter, jelly and banana sandwich. I realistically find that I am short two of the four ingredients. I stare at the wall. I wonder who's idea it was to make a print of the wallpaper that is in my bathroom, which came with the house, and who okayed that, much less bought it.

I envision grandiose building projects in my house and remember shortly thereafter that I have none of the requisite skills or tools to even begin a fraction of what I'm imagining. (This is a continuing theme.)

I trade in a present that would have been great for whenever I went "on the road" for business for something that will be great for when I am sitting at home, looking for something to do besides read want ads that I am "Overqualified" for.

Several hours are spent with the object of my trading, exploring The Capital Wasteland of Fallout 3 trying to find my "father", and bottlecaps (the currency of the day), and violently painting the walls of buildings I have been inside in Washington D.C. in real life with the pixelated blood, and brains, and viscera of the large, green, not entirely domesticated "Super-Mutants" of my current virtual reality.

The dog will show up occasionally, and let me know she would like to go outdoors, and I defer, mostly because I love her, and partly because I understand muscular atrophy and would like to avoid it.

It is usually out in the elements that I come to tiny epiphanies that will take hold or will be as easily forgotten as they came to me. I'll be watching the dog, prancing around, making #1 with haste, but then...then comes the interesting part. She will go in circles. She will smell every tree, branch, flower, tire on a parked car, you name it. She must find the perfect place for her...deposit. Not just anywhere will do. Oh, no, sir. This is an art.

Eventually, a suitable location is found. A stake is claimed. Now, she owns it.

Again, getting the happy look on her face that could either be happiness or possible dehydration, she prances towards and then past me, and onto the steps of our home. I will let her inside and she will be very happy that she did exactly what she went out to do and that she didn't compromise on what she did or where and how she did it.

*Ding!* Epiphany.

Of sorts.

I will be the first to admit that occasionally, one of the many people who are giving me advice, be it solicited or unsolicited, will bring up a potential job solution that I scrunch my nose at and think "No way! I'm too good for that." I will admit that I feel like a complete asshole for even thinking that. I am humble creature. Lately, more often than not. But I also understand what I can bring to the table, and what I can do on any sort of project that I work on. With that being said, with my skill set, and how long I've been doing it, I still react badly to the suggestion that I do something entry-level.

I look back on my previous occupation and I can see it with some objectivity now in the rearview mirror. I liked most of the people I worked with. I liked the perks that came with it occasionally. I had fun many, many times. But was I happy?

In a word: No.

I liked the paycheck. Period.

Now that that's gone, I look at what I was doing and think to myself... there is no way I would do any of that now. It doesn't make me happy. I look at the dog, and her reaction to befouling my backyard and she is more than content. She is mere inches from blissful. She did exactly what she wanted.

Myself, on the other hand. I'm not anywhere closer to figuring out the job situation for the future, but I am much closer to figuring out what makes me happy now.

I'm away from people that stressed me out through terrible communication. I'm long gone from situations that made my hair turn grey before I was 30. I don't have to sit in useless meetings with people not fit to run useless meetings. I'm nowhere close to a "Yes Man." My wife will say "No" just to let me remember that.

I realize it is not wise to work for other people. Other people will do nothing to make you happy. It's not their job. Their job is "really important" but when life is over, and the gravestones are etched it's not going to say "DID THE MOST PAPERWORK." or "FILLED OUT HIS TIMESHEET PROMPTLY."

So, I am no longer working for people. People, who have screwed me over more times than not. People, who aren't concerned about the big picture, only petty details that will be long forgotten years from now.

I don't work for people. I work for money.

I am waking up every day around 8:00 a.m. It is later than I used to rise, and I like that.

The musician Warren Zevon, in the weeks leading up to his death from cancer, was asked for any advice he had for those of us staying on this good Earth, and he said "Enjoy every sandwich."

I'm enjoying every sandwich, and the pets that make me laugh and most importantly, the love of my Wife. She just gets me.

I will find my spot soon enough.

"Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...same as it ever was..."

— Talking Heads / Once in a Lifetime

Overqualified

In The Land Of The Unemployed, "Overqualified" Is A Four-Lettered Word.

"You just know too much."

Well, you know too little.

"You're just overqualified, and I'm afraid you'd get bored."

I'd get bored regardless, eventually. Try me.

"We just need someone more 'entry-level.'"

Well, I just need a paycheck.

A common refrain from many employers is that if you're not straight out of college is that you are "overqualified" for whatever job that they currently have available. This isn't so much an issue when you're selecting your own doctor, or someone to tutor your kids in long division, but when rigidly inserted into the world of owning and running your own business, it's tantamount to blasphemy to go and take the time and commitment to hire someone that is fully aware of what it is he or she is doing.

If you get through the HR muck enough to be told by someone high enough in the hiring hierarchy that you're "overqualified" then you have done an admirable job of making yourself about as close as you can be to a position without having actually received it. The opposite end of the hiring spectrum is that you apply for an open position along with 300 other people who are just as qualified as you, more under-qualified as you, and irredeemably overqualified than you. They're the ones getting told they're too good for it this time. You don't get told anything at all, and someone down on the bottom who is still wearing velcro shoes because of...well, just because, actually gets the position because they won't need to be paid much and can learn on the job.

So there you are, sitting at home. Going over what has gone on the last few days since you've lost your position at your former employment. No doubt you will go through myriad mood swings. Soaring highs and crushing lows. You're reaching the third stage of being "One of Them." Wait a second, you seem to say...What are the first two stages? You don't know?! Well! Let me be your guide. Come along now, little trooper.

The Stages:

The first stage is Shock. You were called in, and told that budget cuts were happening, and that you are, indeed, one of the budgets they are cutting. They don't ask you for anything now, oh no, they will wait until you are getting over this, and they will strike then asking you for things you thought you'd never be doing again, but that's another story for another time. But you are in fact, sitting smack dab in the middle of a thing called Shock, and deep down you know it.

Your finger and toes are numb, almost asleep, with that tingly ethereal sensation you get before you faint, or right before you're about to throw up. They're similar for a reason. You cull through the pile of crap that was really important on your desk and suddenly realize that your Far Side calendar snippets suddenly aren't so funny, and that your basketball card holder really doesn't serve a purpose if you don't have any business cards to put in it.

Hell, you're halfway home before you realize that you actually were just let go. It's okay. It happens to all of us. Enjoy the last few minutes of Shock, which is generally with you for around a day or so, give or take.

(Take a deep breath....look around...get in comfortable chair...because it is about time to...)

FREAK THE FUCK OUT! That's right, buster! The second Stage is full-blown, shit your pants, oh-my-God-I-am-freaking-the-fuck-out-how-am-I-going-to-pay-my-mortgage-or-my-car-or-my-bills-or-my-uh-oh-crap-what-do-I-have-to-pay-forAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH PANIC.

It's okay. It will all be okay. This is the stage I'd like to help people with the most. Because a few of the things --at least for me -- that I've found come with your first couple of days as your own person, is that you:

1. Learn who your friends are.
2. Learn who loves you.
3. Learn to cut negative people that don't support you out of your life.

I was freaking out. Bad. Panic attack freaking out. Couldn't sleep all night because I was afraid someone was going to take my bed and everything else that made me me in my life kind of paranoia. The Panic luckily didn't last long with me. I had people I rarely if ever talked to come out of the woodwork and help my psyche out. Friends let me complain and bitch about my situation. Family let me whine and kvetch and let all the bad air out and just say what I wanted to say.

Some of the people that talked to me on the phone had really stupid and trite cliched advice and some people had really good thoughtful sincere advice, and in those moments you can really, truly tell who is just calling out of obligation and would like to get back to whatever they're doing and who really just wanted to touch base and see how you were and what they could do to help.

Some family told me on both my wife's side and on my side that if things got terrible, we'd have a place to stay. That lifted a huge Monty Python 16-ton weight off of my head. Other folks talked me through different scenarios. One friend helped me immediately by giving me a project to work on that got my mind off of my issues and threw a few bucks in my pocket to stash away, and for that I will be forever indebted to him. He was the MVP of one of the worst weeks I've ever had. Being a heroic figure, however small you might think what you did is, especially in the worst of the really low points makes you a better person than just about anyone else. I appreciate him like no one realizes.

So, basically, Panic was short-lived. In my situation, at least. If you're going through the same scenario, get with the people who know you best, and who you trust and hopefully if you can come up with some sort of contingency, your mind will be somewhat more at ease, as well.

Now, you're coming up on the Third Stage. (Remember when we got into all of this Stage nonsense?)

Before we get too deep into this, I must make clear one of the "rules" of "The Stages."

1. They can overlap.
2. Maybe, in extreme circumstances, they can all be happening at the same time.
3. Every case is different

Stage Three is Reality. Last week you were "THIS PERSON" and now you are just "Some Person." The realistic approach to this is that you are the same person that you were last week. Sure, your business cards aren't accurate, so just throw the things in the trash. You don't have the same routine anymore, so just get out of it. Immediately. If you're like me, you're having trouble sleeping, so just stay up all night until you can't stay awake anymore and you'll find that the bad dreams don't happen because you're sleeping so hard that you don't get proper REM sleep. (This also, is slightly bad since REM sleep is truly restful sleep, but you're breaking habits. I found that earlier this year when I quit a 10+ year cigarette habit Cold Turkey that shocking the system was my best way to get out of things. )

So you're still the same person. Just believe it. Your job does not make you who you are. Sure, it might have given you some nice perks in certain situation if you had a position similar to mine, but once you're out of that work scenario, you start to learn that a lot of what you had, that you had perceived came from your position was really just you doing what you do, but with confidence. With the backing of your employ you were capable of doing great things, but really it was just you doing it because you were doing it for someone else.

Fuck that. You are capable of great things. You, yourself. Your mother and father's kid, can do just about anything you put your mind to.

Don't go thinking you can jump out of a high-rise window and fly or that suddenly barrel-rolling through traffic is a good idea, because anything you put your mind to is a bit much, but if you did it before, or were close to doing something before, you can still do it. Except now you can probably do it better because you don't have the parameters and rules and laws of your former workplace shackling you in, either creatively, figuratively, or literally.

You're your own person, and you can do what you need to do to make things work for yourself and all it takes is brushing yourself off, looking around, realizing there's a whole huge world out there full of experiences you weren't taking because you were too busy working, and go take advantage of it.

Your job doesn't define you. Your career is just something you write down under your name on a business card, which you'll find aren't even really necessary in the days and weeks to come.

So if your job doesn't define you, what does?

The actions you do. The company you keep. The friends you make, and the bonds that you forge. The love of your family, and the trust and care you give to those that love you most.

You define you. The best part about your life's hiring process is that you're never too overqualified to just be yourself.

The job hunt can wait until tomorrow. Today I'm working on me.

You Ain't Allowed To Do Them Things

Day One and I was down in it. The first night was bad. Interrupted by several bouts of sleeplessness, anxiety ridden jolting and tossing and turning. I wasn't sure if I was mad, or hurt, or angry or what. What I did know was that my phone was ringing constantly, with a lot of people telling me not to worry about it, and that my bosses were jerks, and that things would be better. While I appreciated their sentiment and the fact that they called me on my worst day instead of just, you know, a normal day, it just didn't help.

I had made plans with my friend who had also been let go to meet him at the Unemployment Office so that we could make as quick a strike as possible in making sure our funds kept coming, whatever the size of the hit would be dropping from a real salary to an approximation given to you by the State.

The Unemployment office is all the way across town. I had been given word it opened at 8 a.m., so I made my way down at 7 a.m. There was already a line by the time I found the place and parked my car. Fifteen people or so deep. They'd obviously been here before and gone through it. Some were sitting on the floor leaning against the wall of the building catching a quick snooze and other were reading a True Crime novel that was dog-eared and beaten down from multiple perusings. After several minutes there, many more people had arrived. Some had greeted others as if this was a regular occurrence. I called my friend, who had not showed yet, and told him he might want to make it down there with the quickness so he'd have a shot of being there with me while it went down. Frankly, I was glad he was in this with me, because I, at the heart of it all, was just scared. I wanted someone I knew, and was comfortable with, just to be there. To talk to and to make jokes with, and to try to get my brain off of what was suddenly suddenly the all-encompassingly deep end of the pool which was currently my life.

He finally showed right as the doors were opening. There was a fork in the line of "People who had been here and signed up" to the left to stand in one line, and "People who had never been here before and hadn't signed up" to the right, where we were ushered into a room full of strange seemingly late 1990's desktop computer with CRT screens and bulky laser mouses to sign up on. A fully functioning disinterested team of state drones were our multi-headed Charon, leading us down the River Styx that is the Path of Unemployment. Answering questions about why we were currently unemployed (My answer at the time, if answering honestly, would have been "I don't know.") and how long we'd been unemployed ("One day") and the other staples of signing up for anything, from a newsletter to your temporary monetary lifeline were all on this computer screen.

Once all that was filled out, I saw on the screen what they estimated that I would be making. I was disheartened because it wasn't much, or at least as much as I was used to, but I was happy that it was more than I thought I was going to make.

I pulled out my iPhone, hit the "Camera" button and took a picture of the computer screen just to keep a shot of what I would be making as a reminder for later, in case there were any discrepancies. I then clicked "Next" and moved on in my sign-up form.

Not five seconds later I felt an over-manicured bony hand grip my shoulder and I looked up to find a bright aqua/turquoise/purple/hot pink monstrosity of a flowery print dress attached to a woman with a fucking flat top who was staring a hole through me.

HER: "You ain't allowed to do THEM THINGS."

ME: "Excuse me?"

HER: "You ain't allowed to be takin' no cam-er-uh pickshas with your tela-phone-uh."

ME: "Oh, uh...well, I didn't know that, I was just trying to--"

HER: "You were just tryin' to what?"

ME: "I was just trying to keep what I was making for my records, just so I'd know-- "

HER: "They give it to you on A SHEET."

ME: "Well, I'm sorry...I didn't kno--"

HER: "You didn't know?"

ME: "No, ma'am."

HER: "Mmm-hmm..."

And she walked off.

I was shaken.

I was pretty shocked. I was pretty pissed. I was pretty shocked and pissed. There was nothing in this building that said I couldn't take a picture of the stupid computer screen just because I wanted to have on record what the hell I was going to be making because I was now unemployed, which I might add, was not something I wanted to fucking be. Who the hell are you, and why are you being such a bitch and why is it such a big deal that I took a picture anyway. FUCK.

I took a deep breath. I was about to get crazy.

I saw "Flat-Top" walk by again, looking just above the eyeline of everyone trying to get her attention. I tried valiently to get her attention (because hey, she'd at least talked to me, unlike the other ladies who were just walking around staring down the Great Unwashed that they were forced to cohabitate with.) to ask her a question about a different part of the sign-up but she was in full ignore mode by that point as well.

This was my lot in life. At this point, I was thinking about Kafka. I was revisiting high school readings of The Trial and wondering if I would ever be told what I was on trial for. Why these people were staring at me and treating me like this.

I looked around and noticed a lot of other people with what probably was on my mind as well. It was best described as a slow moving parade of hopelessness.

I was done filling out my stuff. My friend finished his as well. We walked out of that room and handed a lady our forms. We were then ushered right back into the room we were just in before. Directed to new computers that were in reality old computers, and instructed how to do very simple things we already knew how to do on the computers. We were given usernames and passwords and were searching for jobs that were available in the State's database.

Once we were clear on how this worked, we were pointed to a waiting room. My friend and I tried to make light of the situation. Compared what our answers were to things on the sign-up list, and shared amazement at the ratio of crying babies to drunk looking people. (Nearly even.)

I pointed out a lady who was close to 6'3" with a script tattoo on her arm proclaiming her as "Big Sexy." He pointed out a little kid, probably two years old, that was sitting on the floor by his mother, as she waited in line, loudly yelling "Wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-aw-wa-wa-wa-wa-aw-wa-aw-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-aw-w-aw-aw-w-aw-aw-aw-aw-aw-wa" without her so much as raising an eyebrow. Of course, everyone else in line was noticing it.

Forty minutes went by. Then, another thirty. Twenty more. My friend and I were running out of things to talk about. We're staring off into space. I pointed out that one of the State jobs is for an assistant cook at a remote Log Cabin in a State Park followed by an opening for a Pediatrician Doctor. We both agreed we fall somewhere firmly in between, or at least we used to, as far as salaries went. None of that matters now, of course.

They called my name. I quickly got up and followed the person who yelled my name into another room without so much as a "see you in a few" to my friend. I was focused and I wanted to get out of there. I'm led into a room full of cubicles as far as the eye can see. Grey, and boring. No personality. It is freezing. So cold that it hurt. I'm led into one particular cubicle on the front row of the thousands (I possibly might be exaggerating, but in my head it seems like even more, going on, ad nauseum, forever.) The man I am inhabitating it with is a frail-looking, gaunt gentleman with thick sweater on (It's June, by the way) and coke bottle glasses, doesn't acknowledge my presence, and is thumbing through a manilla folder in his cold, freezing, boring little office.

We sit there for at least five minutes and my mind is moving back into wondering what kind of Kafka-esque situation I've entered myself into before he looks up with a faint insincere little grin on his face and mumbles "So, you're here for Unemployment insurance?" I agree that I indeed am here for just that. We then go through what they refer to as a qualification interview. I get to re-answer all of the questions that I had previously answered just an hour and a half before on the computer in the realm of "Flat-Top" and give him the same answers that I gave the computer.

He gave me a print out telling me what I would be making on unemployment. It's the same amount and the same information that I had taken a picture of in the Computer lab. "Flat-top" was off somewhere else in the building -- I'm sure -- feeling quite vindicated in her rightness.

He took me through the rules and the steps of what I'd need to do every week to report to the Unemployment office and finally hands me the manilla folder he'd previously been thumbing through while I uncomfortably had sat in his office in the beginning of our visit.

He reached across the desk, finally making eye contact and sent me on my way with a handshake and a mumbled good luck. As I walked out of the cubicle I looked back at him and he was already onto something else, possibly glad to be rid of the schmuck who had paid him his most recent visit.

I walked out of the cubicle farm back into the holding tank, getting my first view of the rest of the people in the Waiting Room, who are all making the same expression I probably was once the novelty of being in that room wore off. It happens quick.

I made my way through there, and past the Computer lab and out into the humid air. I texted my friend, telling him I was outside and that I'd wait for him in my car. Ten or fifteen minutes later, he came out and we talked about how awkward and strange it was to go from what we were doing the day before to what we were doing on this day. We made a few jokes about the people who worked there and their attitudes. We made vague attempts at making plans in the face of having absolutely no plans and I told him I'd make good on that beer he wanted to go have the day we got let go.

We said our goodbyes and our keep-in-touches, and then went our seperate ways.

I haven't seen him in person since then.

Where The End Begins

I'd been working where I worked for a while. Seven years to be exact. In fact, the day I was fired was one week exactly after my seventh year working for my workplace.

It came as a shock and it didn't. I hadn't always gotten along with my supervisor, who was just another supervisor in a litany of supervisors stacked to the ceiling, who were underneath another pile of Vice-Presidents leading up to some guy who owned the place, but enough about that.

Things are tough all over. I realize this. More now than then, but I do and did get it. Things were tight, budgets were being slashed, and the company even sold one of their private planes and let the pilot (who'd been there even longer than I have) go.

The week before it happened, a buddy of mine who was also let go and myself were perceptive enough to notice a lot of closed-door meetings. A lot of hushed talk. People were acting strangely all around. We got a cryptic e-mail telling all of us to "be in the office" one Thursday afternoon for a meeting. Then our supervisor told us "the visitors weren't going to be coming" and the meeting was canceled.

We had speculated and gossiped all day about "why would our boss tell us to be at work during work hours?" And, "why can't he just talk to us now...he's in the next room..."

The weekend happened, and we were off for Memorial Day, and bright and early the Tuesday following it I went into work.

An hour and a half later, I was taking cardboard boxes full of seven years of work detritus back to my car wiping away tears of shock. I was floored. I didn't see it coming. Never expected it to happen. This guy in my department who was also a manager told me he'd tell me all about it. It's over two months later and I haven't heard a peep. Probably doesn't hurt that I banned and blocked everyone I'd directly worked with on any and all social networking I have in my path.

Moments after I had staggered to my desk after being told that I was part of some budget cuts and that it wasn't performance based, but "budgetary" my friend got called in and was told the same thing. He had a different reaction as he'd longed to have the freedom to travel and do things outside of what we'd done at our job. All I remember was my head boss, a V.P., being in the room and saying "This sucks."

The visitors, my head boss and the HR lady, had arrived on this day. Odd to realize we would've been let go five days earlier. At least I had a okay Memorial Day, due to one of the other folks being let go being on vacation the day they were originally going to do it. Hence, the "visitors not coming over" on that day.

He invited me to have a beer, but all I really wanted to do was be by myself. It felt at the time like I'd wasted nearly a decade of trying really hard, and doing good work, and being loyal in the face of good job offers when I could have taken them for nothing. Here I was, with my box of inside jokes from a job I didn't have anymore. My friend and I made plans to go to the Unemployment office the following day.

The strangest part was going to our main office to drop off my keys so that the gears would start turning for my getting any sort of seperation pay. They'd had a meeting that morning to tell everyone that still had a job that several of us had lost ours. When I entered the building to drop off my keys, no one, and I mean no one was at their desks. So my last visit to the place I'd worked the last seven years was a solitary silent affair.

Surreal, to say the least.

I saw the lady who handled our travel in the parking lot. She seemed shocked to see me and told me that she was "really sorry to hear what happened" and I just said "Okay."

The ride home was strange. Telling my wife was even stranger.

My next post will be the very weird tale of my friend and I going to the Unemployment office. It's a doozy.

Kids Say The Darnedest Things And Adults Say The Dumbest

I was doing my morning routine, checking out the news, and the e-mails and the Twitters and I stumbled across something that caught my eye on the Huffington Post and it made my stomach churn in disgust. Michelle Malkin, a conservative talking head, was on the usually entertaining and informative This Week with George Stephanopolous and was somehow picked to be a guest on the Round Table segment of the program. The talk made it’s way to Unemployment and she blurted out that she thinks they need to cancel unemployment because it gives people an incentive not to work.

But why should I tell you this? See it for yourself:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/02/michelle-malkin-cynthia-t_n_249520.html

Yeah, I don’t know about you, but I’m 30 and have been working pretty much nonstop since I was 15. That’s 15 years for those of you that aren’t down with the math. I lost my job at [PLACE I WORKED] back in [FART.] Sure, Unemployment Insurance sure helps to pay the bills, but to say that I wouldn’t take a full time good paying gig over a few hundred bucks a week would be crazy.

I fired off the following e-mail to Michelle at writemalkin@gmail.com:

“I’m 30. I’ve been working nonstop since I was 15. In May I lost my job as a [PERSON DOING THINGS AT A PLACE] due to “budgetary reasons.” It’s the first time in my fifteen year work history that I’ve been out of work and it is just straight up insulting that this rhetoric-spewing, hateful little moron can spread this poisonous horse shit. It’s not like I haven’t tried to get a job. It’s not like I haven’t called in every favor from every work acquaintance I’ve had the last 15 years of living on both coasts, making friends, etc. I’m either “overqualified” or they don’t have anything. Believe me. UIB *barely* pays the bills, and I am completely and totally thankful for it, but to even imply that I wouldn’t take a job in a split second over getting UIB is dense and irresponsible, even for an idiot like Michelle Malkin. “

Haven’t got a response yet, but I’m sure once she gets a whiff of middle class on my e-mail she’ll hit delete before she’s even done reading it. I’ll letcha know.

A Day In The Life

I’m sure there are some of you out there, locked up in a highly satisfying professional life that look out the window of your homogenized corporate tower wondering just what the little people with no jobs do with their whole day. Well, at first it’s a flurry of trying your best to immediately get work and get on with your life and try to get a new job! Gotta hustle! After the first months of getting your hopes and dreams crushed by no one responding to you at all you eventually kind of get in a weird routine that can only be described as “trapped by freedom.” Here’s a peek into the oh-so-exciting dream world that the Employed wish they could be a part of one day (except for that whole, “not knowing where your next paycheck is coming from” thing.)

11 a.m.: What’s up, world? I’m awake and stuff! Let’s shuffle into the living room and pick up the old iPhone. Oh good, I’ve got some spam e-mails from Monster.com, who have complex algorithms and computers that tell them to suggest jobs that match my graphic artist/video editing background. Ooh, today they’re telling me about being the cafe manager at a nearby truck stop and being an account executive at an insurance company. Yay! I love technology. I can only hope they create a robot that does the job of all headhunters. It would be irony (or some similar metallic outer exoskeleton) at it’s finest.

Next up, checkin’ Twitter. People actually message me on there, which is cool. I’m going to do a few reviews for this cool horror movie site I’ve been doing a few things for. I did a really cool interview with a very talented guy from a new horror movie that went up last week. But on the other, darker side of Twitter…Oh, man oh, man…who knew that some celebrities would tweet so much that it would adversely affect my opinion of them…I mean, seriously, Rue McClanahan. Shut the fuck up already.

12 NOON: It’s either going to be some combination of a deli-meat sandwich or one of a handful of various ramen/rice/egg noodle variations baptized in the adoring fire that is, uh, that Korean stuff with the Rooster on the side that is hotter than hell. I am probably on Diet Mountain Dew #2 at this point because I drink like a fish and I quit smoking so I have to have some addiction and supposedly Diet Mountain Dew is healthy? Sure! We’ll go with that. I probably still haven’t turned the tv on at this point.

1 p.m. – 4 p.m.: TV is on. I’m playing Fallout 3. It’s fun. I got into it a little late, but I find it’s better to get into videogames a while after they come out because then you can read all the secrets, tips and tricks and make it more fun and/or less challenging, which always equals “more fun” to me because I am lazy, at least with video games.

5 p.m. – 6 p.m.: Out running errands. Grocery store, Family Dollar Store (which have awesome molasses cookies and previously mentioned ramen noodles) and cheap drinks for the wife. Then over to Dollar General for my drinks, and various sundries. I grab some dinner from either Sonic, or The Local Mexican Joint, or Little Caesars. That’s about all we eat anymore. The other few places in town like Subway has burned us before. A old-school cafe closes too early.

7 p.m. – 2 a.m.: Dinner is eaten. Pets get fed. Wife and I hang out, talk, get online, watch TV, play with the animals, watch Big Brother After Dark on Showtime every night for three freakin’ hours, talk about that game show, etc. Sometime around this time I go look for jobs online and get bummed when there isn’t anything or get really excited and fire off CV’s and resumes that never get a response. Was my old job not big enough? Does my work not stand on it’s own? It is depressing to say the least. Sometime around here I’ll shuffle off to bed, usually by 3 or 4. Tomorrow is another day.

Or is it?