Actually, No. I Don’t Work Here. Or Anywhere.

I had just had a good session with a former classmate of mine. She works at The New York Times. We sat in the Times cafeteria and talked about my job search and her new beat and a few things in between. This is the kind of talk that helps, even if the results do not come quickly or even necessarily bring tangible results. I feel less alone. And better for having chatted with someone else who has not given up completely on journalism in America.
After our get-together and hearing her ideas and advice, I stood in front of the Times building, a cool and still-newish structure designed by Renzo Piano. People were passing by. One man stopped and approached me and said, “Do you work at The New York Times?”
I said no.
He walked away.
I guess mine was the wrong answer. Come to think of it, I was not happy to be reminded that I do not work at the Times. Or anywhere else. Then again, he looked like maybe he wanted to yell at someone who did work for the Times. So maybe mine was the right answer after all.

Theater Break

Earlier this month I went back in time and wrote for a newspaper in New Jersey where I spent about a half-decade in the 1990s. The paper is the Independent Press, a good local newspaper with five editions (or at least we had five editions during my tenure).
This time around I got to do something I loved back in the 1990s and still do: reviewing a play. The only thing that is more fun is giving a good review to a play that deserves one. That was the case here with the latest production of the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey. This theatrical troupe is one of the great gifts of our metropolitan area.
Below please find my review. Consider a jaunt to Madison, N.J. It's worth it. Next on the agenda at the Shakespeare Theatre: the oh-so-fabulous Harriett Harris stars in "Noises Off."

http://www.nj.com/independentpress/index.ssf/2009/07/summertime_school_succeeds_mol.html

Before the Interviews

I have two interviews set up for this week: one for a position I want and one for a job I don’t.
If history is any guide, then I will do better when I don’t want the job. I wish this were not true, but somehow I shine best when I do not give a damn. There’s something so freeing about sitting down and chatting with someone who’s offering a position of little or no interest to me. We can just be ourselves. There’s no worrying. There’s so little in the way of mental maneuvering, no time wasted on wondering what I’m forgetting to say weighing if I’m making the right points in the right way. None of it matters because I simply do not want the job.
Now interviewing for the sake of interviewing feels like a waste of time—mine and someone else’s—but I used to like the sport of it. Ten years ago, when I was last actively seeking employment, I found myself loving the interview process. Back then, my big problem was that I might actually get a job offer after one of those what-the-hell job interviews. Someone would call and say, “Hey, you interviewed for that position at NASA and now we are offering you the job.” And I would respond, “Good Lord, whatever made you think that I am interested in the space program?” Then I would remember that I had been down to Houston and chatted amiably with someone and suddenly I had a job offer from exactly the wrong place.OK, I’m kidding. But the essential truth remains: When I care, I get self-conscious and there are too many things I want to mention and I sit there and wonder what I’ve forgotten. I come across…cloudy, I think, or at least less clear about what makes me a good fit for a dream job. I guess it’s no big surprise: it’s scarier when there’s actually something at stake.

The Beggar

The young woman was asking for help, probably money. She was approaching us one by one as we stood after 11 p.m. on the platform at Newark’s Broad Street station. I was between trains, transferring from the one which picked me up in Madison, N.J., a frighteningly quiet town after one lives in the borough of Manhattan for seven years, and I was waiting for the train that would take me, blessedly, to Penn Station. The young woman—how young? I wonder now, but then she seemed mostly to be something between a nuisance and a threat—was holding a teddy bear, which would have been a tactical advantage in dealing with most people. Not me. I thought the teddy bear was a bit much and I was exhausted from traveling out to review a play at the New Jersey Shakespeare Theatre—a fabulous production of “The School for Wives” by Molière—and I did not want to hear the spiel. I could not, at that hour on this day of this month, bear to hear her out. So I called to get my messages. I was basically using the phone as a weapon to disengage. I was faking. She knew that. She was on to me. She approached anyway and started her spiel. “No,” I said. She looked angry. “Someday it could be you,” she said.
A legitimate point. If I did not have a partner who would move in with me at the end of next month to pay my mortgage or parents who would let me borrow a bed, I too could be out on the street. Certainly I could lose a home I love. Part of me wanted to call after her and tell her that actually she was onto something and that we had a few things in common. I lost my job. Does she have one? I am having some serious money problems. She must. I just got on the phone with the student loan company to ask for forbearance—and I’m hoping they will be more responsive to me than I was to the woman on the platform.
But I know that my situation is not as desperate as hers. I have a place to sleep. I do not need to harass strangers at the station. I have a precious few people who would take me in—a handful, really…actually I wonder how many—but a handful can be enough. I am lucky, still, but spend a fair amount of time feeling terrified, fearful of the future.
I did not say anything to the woman. She reminded me of my own little terrors, rational and otherwise. I did not like the way she approached people or even, at that hour and in that place. A moment of candor: I have a certain fondness for the place and an irrational hope, but Newark is still largely a mess, even with the cute mayor and the classy baseball stadium and the arts center full of suburbanites. There's a long way to go and this particular train station is not my favorite hangout. I did not like her mean manner or what I suspected was her use of the teddy bear as a prop.
But I do wonder what will happen to her, and to me, and to the 10 percent of the people in this country who do not have jobs.
Someday it could be you.

The Morning Shower Moves to Late Afternoon

I need to take my morning shower. Cause it’s almost 4 p.m.
It’s been one of the bigger—or at least one of the more odorous—issues associated with my unemployment. It might be a sign of serious depression, I know. But perhaps not. After all, part of the problem is that this morning I got up and just started making job-search calls. Then I went out and got a little exercise and did some errands and came back and watched Republicans say strange things about Judge Sonia Sotomayor and then just sorta forgot about the shower.
It makes sense for me to have this problem, since showering was the first part of putting together a look for my day. And now, given that I’m alone in a room most of the time, I do not need a look for my day. Or at least it feels that way sometimes.
Not that I am really slacking. If anything, I feel as if I have been working harder than ever. I really do not want anyone to be able to say that I am not trying to get work. Or, more likely, it’s more than that, more deeply rooted: it is that I never want to wonder within myself about whether I have tried hard enough.
I’m not sure why I feel so strongly about this. It’s likely that I have more of a Puritan work ethic than I ever knew. I make lists and then actually do what’s on them—for the most part. There are some tasks that are more daunting than others (I am still bothered by calling the credit card companies and the student loan people and have put that off beyond when I should have), but mostly I get the job of seeking a job done. This morning, for instance, I got up and called places I want to work and the people who control those jobs. Nobody calls back, of course, but that’s another matter entirely. I have the satisfaction of having tried. And I will do it again tomorrow and the next day.
All I need to do now, though, is remember to bathe.

Wonder Woman

I met with Wonder Woman eight days ago.
Or my personal variation of Wonder Woman.
She was a career services specialist and she had contacts. She wisely recommended that I think up different sets of goals, ranging from Dream Jobs to the ones that I would do to pay the rent (mortgage in my case). Once I rattled off a couple of the Dream ideas, she would take direct action, making phone calls to people who could get those jobs for me. She left a few good messages. She really helped with my resume, paying more attention to it than I ever did.
Nothing has come of all of this yet, but with some follow-up from me and some luck—I’m a big believer in luck, even when I’m not actually having any—maybe something will. I do know that it was empowering just to be in the room with someone smart and wise and with a few contacts. It felt healthy to get help in a simple, can-do way. Now I’m back to helping myself, but those moments last week left we with a tiny sense of the possible. I need that. Probably everyone does.

The Work of Not Working

I am waiting for the cat to pee.
It turns out—and this is something I really did not know back when I was an employed American—my cat Max does not do a lot of peeing. But he does a lot of sleeping. So this morning and now this afternoon I am watching him sleep. I’m not loving it. Heck, I don’t think even he’s loving it.
This is supposed to be one of the up-sides of being jobless: you have time to take care of errands and household projects. Waiting for Max to urinate would be a combination of the two, I guess, or at least a variation. The vet needs a urine sample from one of my two high-quality felines, so my being home now to collect his urine sample should be ideal. Well, I guess the phrases “urine sample” and “ideal” never go together, but this is a little household task that at least I’m taking care of. (We won’t get into how you get the urine sample.)
At least I have a shot of getting this task done. So many others are hanging over my head: reorganizing the closets (or am I organizing them for the first time? I can’t remember); cleaning out the goo between the tiles on the floor; having the bathtub relined; and throwing away all the stuff that needs to be thrown away. I would think I would further along on all of these things, especially the ones that take little or no money. But even with the gift of time in my schedule, I find myself pretty unable to make progress. I’m consumed with the job thing and really do spend the workdays…working. Even without a job.
In a way, I’m working harder than ever. Cause when I’m here, just me and the cats and my laptop, I work pretty intensely and usually without much interruption—until “The View” comes on. Thank God my wacky gals were back this morning from their vacation. Other than time off for Whoopi and company, working at home has been oddly productive, in the sense that I have finished a lot of emails and job applications and made contact with a fair number of people. I’m disciplined enough to keep—and then keep to—a to-do list.
As anyone who has ever been in an office knows, it’s wacky there. It’s all about whether Sandy and Bobby are dating and whichever jerk has just called to yell at you and left a message and you are left wondering whether you should respond first to the voice-mails or just keep emailing. It’s a mess. A hectic mess where the to-do list is always under assault from other people, especially the ones who can fire you. Working at home is lonelier, but not as lonely as I would have thought. I don’t miss the constant interruptions or the we-did-not-need-this-meeting meetings or even most of the people. I do miss a few of them, though, and I miss the reason for getting up in the morning.
Max just started another nap. Seems to have no need to pee. If this is a metaphor for my current situation, I don’t quite grasp it.

Good Neighbors

The neighbors help. They really do.
They may even be the primary reason that so far I am thinking that New York City is the best place to be unemployed. I think it was lonelier the last time, 10 years ago, back when I was looking for a job in New Jersey. Well, I was looking for a job while living in Jersey…I’m not sure whether it’s accurate to say that I was looking to work in New Jersey.
A decade later, my job search is conducted from a studio apartment in Manhattan. Small space, but maybe I have a bigger support network now. Or at least it feels that way in the better moments, like the other day when a lovely neighbor knocked on my door and asked me if I wanted to go to Silver Moon Bakery for a chocolate chip cookie, which she was willing to pay for. There were so many things right about this offer: the neighbor, herself part of the looking-for-work brigade, exactly the kind of person I need to talk to when things are down; the idea of taking a little walk, which is so healthy and gets me out of my rut; the spontaneity of it all; and the not insignificant fact that this woman has the good taste to realize that the chocolate chip cookie at Silver Moon is indeed an answer to many of life’s woes.
It turned out that, real life providing yet another disappointment, the bakery had sold out of the chocolate chip cookies. But my neighbor paid for my iced tea and we sat on a bench on Riverside Drive, right there within spitting distance of the park, and we talked about looking for work and how it can impact on a relationship and how it’s important to try not to drive a partner crazy with all the ups-and-downs, mood-wise. A day or so before, I had sat on another bench along the same stretch with another neighbor, talking about other facets of a job search. I have been working on some of my most serious problems right there on those benches, with smart, funny, quite remarkable women who know a hard time when they see it, but they also seem to know how to keep going. They inspire me. They add so much flavor to my life and to my city, not unlike the chocolate chip cookie at Silver Moon Bakery.