First-hand accounts of being unemployed
I remember the day clearly. It was warm, not hot, with a breeze to keep us comfortable. I had been working at that site, building frames to install solar panels for several months. It was very physically demanding. I didn’t like the job, but I liked the money it gave me. I was working for the Laborer’s Union for about a year and was employed more often than not. I worked on demolishing buildings and road paving crews. The Union…
I always wanted to be a university English professor but by my senior year of college, the unemployment rate in the field was 99%. The words a Dean said to me a few years before came back to haunt me. It was at a freshman “Meet Your Professors” event where I introduced myself to the Dean of Arts and Sciences. I told him my major and he replied laughingly that I would be “Highly unemployable!” I thought he was rude…
When I decided to quit my job in October 2016, I knew I had some tough times ahead. I knew I’d have to hustle to pay my rent, my bills and my student loans. I knew I had to throw out my current budget, create a much leaner one and preserve the little bit of cash reserves I had on hand. BUT… the hopelessness of watching your savings account dwindle isn’t the worst part of being unemployed. I wasn’t prepared…
As a kid, I was taught a lot of things. For example, to entertain myself, respect my elders, and not to drop ping pong balls on Grandpa’s head from the loft (which is another story for another day). I also picked up on a lesson that I think too many of us learn – the art of politely saying no when someone offers you something. After all, you don’t want to be a bother and should be able to take…
I was 17 years old when my son was born. I was also broke, jobless and had a little man relying on me. To be fair, I was just a child, but very quickly realized I was getting nowhere fast. Daycare was too expensive, so working was out of the question. The only option left for me was college, but that was an expense I could not afford. So I found a different way. I received ALL of my schooling…
Three Keys to Cutting Costs While Waiting for a ‘REAL JOB’ You tear open the envelope and stare down at your horse boarding bill for the month. Your eyes widen, the envelope flutters to the ground, and you put your face in your hands. You haven’t had the strength to announce to the world that you’ve just lost your job, and if you don’t hustle, you’re soon going to lose your horse. This is exactly what I experienced when I…
I have always considered myself a lucky man and when my wife delivered a set of triplets in January 2011 through a Caesarian section, my joy knew no bound and I truly believed I was the luckiest man alive. The birth of the triplets brought much publicity, lots of goodwill and considerable strain on my finances. The hospital bills alone cost me about a $1000. Though I didn’t have any issue coming up with that money, the money required to…
One of the positive things about viewing Unemploymentville as a destination, as a travel destination especially, is it makes it easier to think about it as being some place you travel through as temporary surroundings. There is a reader comment on Amazon on the book, Landing on the Right Side of Your Ass: A Survival Guide for the Recently Unemployed about what if you don’t land on the right side of your ass and they talk about how they took…
P.S. If you can’t hear anything with this video, you may be watching it on Firefox. Try another browser. Due to the feud between Google which owns YouTube and Yahoo which owns Firefox, YouTube and Firefox also aren’t talking to each other.
This post is the first of what I hope will become a series, checking back in on folks who once felt stuck in unemployment and despaired of ever getting out among the working again. These stories are unlikely to consist of tales where everyone lived happily ever after. Still I think there is a value to being able to fast forward from someone’s time being unemployed to see what happened. It gives us a chance to see someone’s “future” when…