Meditations of the Unemployed

these are my darker thoughts all thrown into one. these are not all of my thoughts.

9/10/10

Go to café and shoot shit and eat food until my landlord Razh B. Gosh gets me a copy of my key. $6 My keys are missing as of last night.. Get key from Razh. Bring bike wheel into shop for new tube – go to wrong entirely wrong side of town in effort to get a lock so that I can ride my bike to the grocery store and drop off a resume. Key for bike lock is lost with keys. Two hours wasted. Finally find bike store – don’t like the selection. They say – try the locksmith, maybe they can make you a new key. Go to locksmith – locksmith cannot make a key for the old lock. Leave. Go back – you forgot – go back and make two copies of your house key so you never have to repeat this. $4. Go to 2nd locksmith – they send you to a 3rd locksmith. 3rd locksmith says no dice. But you can buy a brand new lock. I have one left. Fine. $40. Walk to Trader Joe’s across the street. Finally I can do what I intended to do when I left my house today – finally I can apply for a job. Trader Joe’s floor clerk points me to the “office” area. Not hiring, says the man behind the desk. In fact, when they were hiring they got over a thousand applicants and hired 55. About the other Trader Joe stores, the man at the office says “we’re all in the same boat”. And so it is on America. A thousand people apply to work at a grocery store. 945 go away empty handed. I am one of them.

I remember the nice lady at the Sweet Adeline café “Ahhh….” She said smiling at my resume. “A graduate of Reed – a highly educated barista!” It’s true. My mama used Boeing money and her business savings to put me through a college that cost somewhere around 35 grand a year and now I can’t get hired at a grocery store.

But right when my blood sugar & hopes had plunged to record lows – there’s Chris Edley on the phone – "my folks want to meet you tomorrow." A glimmer of hope. There was also the extremely nice Mexican girl at Common Grounds who immediately pounced on me. Might be able to set up a blog for them. Shoot some pictures of the space – offer to manage it – maybe make a little cash. She also wanted me to hang work – just unsure if I can drop the funds. I guess it would just be a couple hundred bucks and then I could hang them again in another space. Do some actual PR. Get my name out there.

Sitting on the rush hour train – everyone around me has that light airy, bubbly employed color – everyone knows where their rent and mortgage payment is coming from, where tonight’s supper is coming from. They talk on their cell phones and complain about how their internet service is down or what swimming club they go to. Round trip Bart ride $7. I write with a pen I stole from a cell phone company in a book I made with my mother and wonder with all the sincerity in the world how I’m going to make it in America and what path I should be pursuing.

9/13/10

Everyday. Everyday is the same. Everyday is begun with a feverish, hopeful beginning. I made a good breakfast with the lines running through my head: “Today I’m going to make it happen. Today is the day my bad luck ends.“ All the faith in the world. I get on my bike and ride to the café, order a latte, and immediately start applying to jobs, filling out the same forms, answering the same questions a hundred times over. Please list your employers for the last 5 years, 3 references, your skills. I must have filled this out a thousand times. A thousand and one. All the blank fields stare back at me, mocking me with their blankness.

Whole Foods - Apply online. Trader Joe’s - apply online even though you went to the store and the man behind the desk said they received 1,000 applications and hired 50 people and were no longer hiring. Chat with your previous boss from Russia on Skype about resuming translation work from the US. Inquire about training program at the local radio station; email the contact you met at dinner the other night, trying to get a job babysitting your friend’s younger siblings. Find out all the addresses of all the restaurants and cafes that are hiring according to Craig’s list and jot down all the addresses to ride to later and drop off an application. Jupiter, new cafe you never heard about, movie theater, book store x2, record store, art supply store. (When you finally get there hours later they will tell you they are not hiring or tell you that you don’t want to work there). Make ads on Craig’s list for babysitter, housecleaner, photographer, search for openings, apprenticeships, internships. Everyday on my bike I ride to approximately 15 different institutions all of which give me the same response: we are not hiring at the moment but we always accept resumes. They take my piece of paper, the man or woman behind the counter, and the piece of paper is tucked away into a dark void and I understand as they slip the paper into that void that my opportunity of employment is again lost forever. At the last bar, while standing there, waiting for the tank-top adorned bartender to catch my attention, I realize that no one is going to hire me. A storm cloud has now gathered over my head. I see the world in black and white, a world made up of one word “NO”. “NO.” The sound of the word “NO” echoes throughout my brain. My eyes are dark and shining. I realize I must leave the bar and come back at another time when I don't feel like this. Indeed, come six pm I don’t think I can take it anymore. I go home and I prepare a huge delicious dinner to make up for my lackluster day of rejection, my lackluster month of rejection. I made a huge delicious dinner to which no one comes home to. I want to cry into my dinner.

America. America you pose quite a challenge. I will be rounding up to 30 years of age soon. A perfectly capable human being, America, and you deny me the right to bag groceries. I have the drive and determination of a thousand college-bound Asian students. I have the guile and the concentration of a hundred Russian gymnasts. One woman told me I should work for the CIA. The other asked me if I aspire to work at Trader Joe’s – if that is my career goal. America – I am confident I will break in. But you do make me wonder – what about all the others, how the hell are they making it, America, you cut me no breaks.

But the Iraqi man at the corner store. He understands. “I don’t know what’s happening,” he says. “Everyone is losing their jobs.”