A Different Ballgame 07.03.10
Happy Oscar-Sunday readers!
The day when most people, even employed ones, get to feel bad about themselves. The closest most of us will come to holding a gold statue and having Versace design our dress/tuxedo is through photoshop.
One perk of being unemployed is you can make up what you do with your time. For example, I could be working on a script, writing a book, or doing lots of auditions rather than just not having a job (see previous blog post about how it’s not lying if it makes you look better). In that sense, all of us unemployees could be working our way towards an Oscar, for all you know. So maybe, Oscar-Sunday is the least depressing for those without jobs because we can pretend we’re just holding out for Hollywood.
Speaking of awards, I just received an e-mail from a journal called Creative Nonfiction where I entered something for a best narrative blog post contest they were holding back in August. I never heard back, and since at the time I was on a beach in Italy, wasn’t too stressed about it. I just found out that though my entry, called Larry’s Nap, didn’t win, I made the top 15 posts out of 800. I’m like Precious, nominated, but ultimately losing to Streep or Bullock. I’ll take it.
Because tonight is all about the stars, I’ve decided to blog about the little guy. The everyday man/woman (Take that O Canada!) working hard for
Dan the shoe man
those toons and loons.
Earlier this week I was reading an article in Canadian Business titled “A new career in a year” which listed nine professions that require under 12 months of training. Number eight is a cobbler because shoe repair shops are busy and after some training you could be making over $30,000.
This made me think of a smiley Vietnamese man who runs a shoe repair shop in my neighborhood. He always looks up from his machine to wave when I pass by the long window of his store, his head like a buoy amongst a sea of footwear. Plus, he did a really great job on a pair of boots I brought in a couple years ago. I decided to stop in and as how fruitful he finds his work.
Here’s what he had to say:
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Dan repaired these fabulous pups. The boots, asshole.
Also, I found this blog by a former Seattle Times reporter dedicated to narratives about the plight of the little guy. Ch-h-h-heck it.
Pointers 28.02.10
Happy pretend-you’re-going-to-work-tomorrow day!
We all deserved to drink that much beer, scream like babies when Sid scored gold, or boycott the game, drink wine instead of beer, and read the New York Times. All types of people are welcome here. Especially editors and/or family members of important people in the media.
Whether or not we all like our national sport, we can all agree on one thing: running into high school people is awkward (yes, even if you were the popular girl. Trust me, I was). Running into high school people when you don’t have a job and living at your parent’s place is like putting the rotten cherry on top a cake made of lies, insecurities, and panic. Trust me. I’ve been eating it a lot lately.
A coffee shop just opened a block away from my house, which is great for having a reason to leave the house, but bad for trying to forget my current situation. Every time I walk through the doors there are at least two people reminding me that I used to wear platform shoes and tight shirts (maybe that’s why I was popular?!?) or that I live at home with no job.
I guess I should feel comforted by the fact that these other people must be in a similar situation (our neighborhood doesn’t have many kids who don’t live with her parents) but instead it makes me feel mad at my high school for telling us the high percentage of people that move onto post-secondary education, rather than the high percentage who come back to the house with their baby picture on the fridge.
Me at university pretending to be at a high school dance. I just learnt what Simulacra was...
The way I see it, there are two options when faced with an ex-high schooler (if you like dressing up as the opposite sex, there’s your third): Play stupid or man up.
Option one requires co-operation. If the other person is willing to act like they can’t see two metres in front and to quickly turn their head every time your eyes meet, bravo! That kind of coordination rivals that cute Canadian figure skating couple that won gold.
Problem is, this option pretty much only works on people you avoided anyway in high school. If you had any kind of relationship, more times than not, you’re stuck with option two: dialogue.
This can be pleasant if a) you look good, b) you just received an e-mail with good news you can report, or c) you’re so bored you need human interaction of any kind. If not, you’ll probably have an obnoxiously polite conversation during which you both exaggerate and/or deprecate your own situations and then agree to have a drink you both don’t want to/or know won’t happen.
Sound fun? It’s not. Because I care about you, my readers (yes, even you, though we both avoided each other yesterday in line for a latte), I’ve prepared a guide to get you through some commonly painful situations. Remember, it’s not lying if it makes you look better.
*The following conversations may contain exaggerated content. Ex-high schooler’s I spoke to in the last week, be advised.
Situation #1: You run into someone from high school when you’re out of town, who doesn’t live with their parents.
Tip: Avoid admitting you live at your parent’s house by focusing on the future
Scene: A restuarant.
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Situation #2: You run into a successful person from high school and want to make yourself look good.
Tip: Take whatever prospects you do have, pretend they’re a balloon, and blow hard to help decorate your lie.
Setting: A coffee shop.
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Situation #3: You run into someone in your hometown who also doesn’t have a job and lives with their parents but is at ease with their situation.
Tip: Pretend you are as well so you don’t look desperate.
The scene: A yoga studio.
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Sunday Practice (21.02.10)
Ah Sunday. A day when the unemployed can pretend they are like everyone else: sleeping in because they’re about to begin another work week. There’s no shame in getting drunk on Saturday night, waking up Sunday afternoon and spending all day watching Mad Men when you have a job! Hooray! Sunday is an unemployed person’s Halloween: you’re dressed as someone with a salary.
Because Sunday is a national day of relaxing (thanks to the catholic church), there’s lots of time to read. My father likes to point out every article on journalism he reads, which usually describe how twitter is the new newspaper, newspapers are the new toilet paper and journalists have the new worst professions ever. Thanks pops!
This morning, or afternoon should I say, was no different. I stumbled downstairs with last night’s make-up on and stared at the blurry New York Times until my eyes could focus.
“Did you read the article on journalism,” chirped my dad, who’s surely been up since 5 a.m., from the sofa.
“No,” I replied, much preferring to stare at the glossy pictures of celebrities in the Times magazine.
He diligently went through each section of the paper, until he found what he was looking for. I poured myself some tea and hunkered down to read about an editor whose job went from editing a daily online trade newsletter to editing that and ten other weeklies for the same pay.
The article did point out a silver lining for those of us under thirty: We’re less screwed because the boomer generation can remember a better work reality. We were born into the shitstorm.
Then I logged onto Facebook to see my friend had posted a link to another journalism article. I love when people do the leg work for me. This one is infinitely more depressing because it describes a journalist who after being laid off from a magazine, gave himself a social media makeover: joining Facebook, twitter, and starting a blog. He now makes half his
(me sentenced to a life in my bathroom for believing in print journalism)
salary, most of which comes from writing for an online business magazine, rather than from the feature-writing job he loved.
Today was like the Halloween when your cardboard batman mask snaps and all you get are those gross caramels with the orange wrapping.
I think next Sunday I’ll sleep in later, avoid talking to my father, and boycott Facebook. At least then I can enjoy the black and white glossies of Tobey MacGuire and Jake Gyllenhaal and pretend I’m going to work the next day.
Fine Tuning (17.02.10)
Today’s a day for another Unemployment Diary confessional: I turned down a job. Well, more accurately, I was on my way to getting a job and I tripped myself intentionally before the home run.
Why would someone who has dedicated a blog to her unemployment problem sabotage an opportunity to be paid to write? It wasn’t right. I know I said I’d go to the outer edges of the earth to work at a newspaper, but actions are harder than words.
The job I may have gotten was as a news editor in East Coast Canada at a bi-weekly paper. Not bad, except, packing up and moving to a small town is not what I want to do for a number of reasons. Don’t call me a hypocrite, just call me human and allow me to add a clause to my question: How long does it take a Journalism minor to find a job in a dying industry (at a news publication in Ontario/Quebec OR a city with a population of more than 20,000)?
It’s easy to find work, but not the kind that pays. I’ve committed to the next few months in Ottawa for family reasons and so far have found I can write for Metro newspaper on my own dollar. I’ll take it. I start tomorrow. Seriously.
Obviously, I’m still looking for paid work, but in the meantime, no bills + no job = Ang takes free work. No. Not that kind. We’re still talking journalism people.
Recently, when I was in Toronto helping a friend with his play, I decided to interview some of the actors backstage about working “pro-bono” in their field.
Here’s what one of them had to say:
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A quick google search of Lyndie also reveals she acts in a web series called B.J. Fletcher: Private Eye. Check it out, she’s the one with a gun!
Halftime 12.02.10
Alright, I know it’s been ten days and you’re all feeling really down on yourselves because you don’t have me to feel worse for.
I’m sorry, but I’m doing what unemployed people do: taking vacations whenever I want until the money runs out.
I’m back in Toronto for another fun-filled week to help my friend Zack Russell put on a play for the Rhubarb Festival. It’s fun, and I’m hanging out with a bunch of actors who are working for free and probably have spent the majority of their lives unemployed. They’re great company.
Until I throw my tape recorder in the face of another successful journalist, I’ll leave you with another inspiration of mine. She’s 13, she wears orthopedic shoes, and was invited to New York Fashion Week last September. Who is, Tavi Gevinson. This name isn’t news for any of you interested in the fashion world, but for the rest of you, thank me later.
For all of us trying to get a job or working one’s we hate, Tavi’s proof that if we had been born a decade earlier, our age might have been the cache we needed to beat the other millions of people hoping to get famous through the internet. Just look at Justin Bieber. In internet years, we’re too old, but we can always have kids quick and exploit them for our benefit. Who wants to help me make a baby who can blog about learning to walk? Any takers?
Seriously though, Tavi’s cool. She’s been in French Vogue, written for Harper’s Bazaar, and probably still has an afterschool snack. Plus, she dances like this.
(If Tavi’s parents are reading this blog and want a babysitter for their daughter at Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week this Spring, call me!)
Coaches Corner 03.02.10
I find the only seat left in the place. People are buzzing like birds that spin around cartoon characters’ heads after they fall. I feel dizzy. It’s as if Harper just announced that once Parliment resumes, he’s proroguing caffeine from Ottawa. It’s noon at a downtown coffee shop and people, employed people, need their fix.
It’s strange to be outside my bubble, a circumference that includes my house, the closest coffee shop, and the closest bar. I forgot that driving ten minutes gets me to a city, as did one Toronto friend, who after I told this anecdote asked, wait, Ottawa has a downtown?!. Yes it does. And it’s full of busy people leading busy lives and stopping in busy coffee shops to oil their joints.
Laura Stone is one of those busy people. The fellow King’s grad breezes in the joint after stepping off a treadmill and has half an hour to kill before heading to work across the street.
I had come from my parents’ attic, and had as much time to kill as I possibly could before I had to go to my mom’s friends basement and shred medical records.*
Luckily, the coffee shop is the great equalizer, and no one can tell you’re unemployed as long as you have a four-dollar something in front of you.
Lovely Laura at a park in Harlem
Laura sipped her latte, and me my tea, and we discussed none other than GETTING A JOB. Laura’s in the middle of a one-year internship at Canwest, a newswire service for Canadian papers. She chases stories from her desk: researching online, making phone calls, and hoping they get picked up. She likes the work, but says it can be disheartening when she writes a good story and the only other paper that runs it is some rag in Peterborough (who should know I would work for them, by the way).
She graduated with an English degree before doing a two-year journalism Masters at Carelton University in Ottawa. Last summer, she interned at a Vancouver paper called The Province, and is a big proponent of going where the jobs are.
She was even considering taking a job at a small town paper in Bathurst New Brunswick before finding out she landed the Canwest gig.
Coincidentally, I recently received an e-mail from an editor at the Miramichi Leader, a small-town N.B. paper, asking if I’d like to talk about a news editor position. I had applied for a reporting job there weeks ago, and figured I’d lost out to some other job-hungry Ontarian or overqualified NB journalist laid off from a bigger paper.
News editing? Miramichi? Things were so much less complicated when I had no prospects…
But enough about me (Wait, this blog is about me. More on me later…). Laura has a job in her field and therefore qualifies to be featured on the Unemployment Diaries as an offical coach.
Here are her words of wisdom.
Thanks Laura!
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*That’s right, I’ve been keeping busy for the past two weeks by shredding 10-year-old medical records for my mom’s doctor friend. I think I’ve cured a lot of diseases. Out of sight, out of mind? I’m not sure it qualifies as a job, considering I’m trying to work for a paper rather than destroy it but it pays the bills (which I don’t have because I live with my parents).
Curveball 03.02.10
During a late night narcissistic attempt to track through google how many people read The Unemployment Diaries, I stumbled upon a blog by the Washington Post of the same name.
The description is this:
“Across the Washington region, 10 unemployed men and women agreed to keep diaries for The Washington Post to document how the rhythms of their days have changed. They describe how a once predictable market in which jobs were plentiful has turned moody and abusive. It is the afternoons that sometimes seem endless now, a vast plain of time that must be filled with something other than watching TV and picking up the kids.”
If only they hadn’t started before me I could claim plagiarism, or at least an original idea, but seems like all I can say is great minds think alike (and swear I didn’t get the idea from them).
Check out the video, and some of the entries. I must say, it puts things into perspective seeing adults talk about being unemployed. It’s not all hats and red lipstick. Being an unemployed post-undergrad feels like going to a family reunion: uncomfortable, but necessary. Being an unemployed previously employed person must feel like going to a family reunion without the free booze: uncomfortable, and completely unnecessary.
Obviously, I pitched myself to the editor and said she should feature my blog because of the previously mentioned differences.
Let’s wait to see what she says, and in the meantime, I wonder who has more hits?
(Here’s a song by Beck whose lyrics people of all ages, shapes, and job status’ can agree on)
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Canada’s Narrative Nonfiction Babe Ruth (19.01.10)
Listen as the unemployment diaries celebrates a bunch of firsts: a famous, willing, and multimedia participant on the blog…and a game-show
Let’s play jeopardy! (A favourite pastime of any unemployed person).
Category: Famous Canadians.
Clue: Globe and Mail columnist and feature writer, author of three books (most recently and most famously Boy in the Moon, about his handicapped son), host of two documentaries and a CBC Radio show.
Answer: Who is Ian Brown.
Trebek: Correct.
Category: Explaining strange events
Clue: Ian Brown sits with unemployed journalist, Angelina Chapin, after she e-mails him to say she loves his writing and is coming to Toronto.
Answer: He’s just a nice guy?
Trebek: Correct.
Well, it’s the best explanation I can come up with. That, and the fact people love talking about themselves.
I e-mailed Brown two weeks back to say I’d be in Toronto and would love to meet. I’m a big fan of his writing, which is mostly in the narrative nonfiction style (the genre I’ll be doing my Masters in) and, he manages to do it in that ready-to-choke publication, the newspaper.
The first time I read Brown was in a university narrative nonfiction course. His article was about Toronto’s Mount Sinai hospital during the SARS epidemic and the general struggles of a health care system under pressure. Canadian health care? Pass the Perez Hilton…
But Brown did something different. He created characters, scenes, and evoked feeling. I learned intimate details about people that brought the story to life: Dr. Wunder (actual name!), one of the hospital’s surgeons, is a handsome boyish man, “renowned for sending e-mail messages at 3 a.m. and working all the next day.”
I came away from the story with more than facts. I had questions about myself, about what I would do in the moral dilemma 
doctors (whom I now felt I knew) are faced with. This is the point of narrative nonfiction. It’s journalism, in terms of its factuality, but is storytelling, in terms of its affect on the reader.
As we sit in the Globe and Mail cafeteria sipping tea, I ask Brown if he’ll share some of his insights on whether newspapers can still traffic in good storytelling in the tweet-it, you-tubey, blog-your-face-off media landscape.
His answers are surprisingly optimistic (and my questions, not surprisingly, awkward).
Enjoy, and remember to pass on to any friends in high places.
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More Coaching…(21.02.10)
I meet with former schoolmate Lyndsie Bourgon to hear how she got to be more successful than me…
“My standards have dropped to anything involving words,” says Lyndsie, sitting across from me at a Toronto diner.
Lynds is a King’s College journalism grad. We met in our third year working on the school paper, The Watch. She, as one of the editors-in-chief, and me, as an arts editor.
Lyndsie’s cute as a button, with matted-down blonde chin-length hair and a shy school-girl smile. The best part about her? Despite being successful, she’s completely non-threatening. For a journalism grad, she has an odd sense of altruism towards fellow struggling journalists.
We met last week, along with our friend Ruth, the other editor-in-chief for the Watch. It was like an unemployment sandwich. Yup, I was in the middle.
Though I think we all wished the state of journalism had been frozen in time like the plastic booths and retro bar stools around us, Lyndsie has been pretty successful (so has Ruth, but will save that story for another rainy day).
In November, Lyndsie landed a gig as assistant editor at Yahoo!. Pretty good in the midst of lay-offs and newspaper slashings.
It wasn’t an easy haul.
She moved to Toronto in July, and did “four months of solid application writing, every single day.” Lynds landed some interviews and soon became used to hearing “You were in our top two, but…”
Her interviews for summer internships with the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star sounded downright scary (A general knowledge test with too many blank spaces, and an answer to the question “What do you want to do here?” that totally bombed), so she stayed afloat with corporate copy-editing and freelancing until she heard about the Yahoo! gig.
Should I get glasses?
If Lyndsie stumbled to find her footing, I’ll probably fall on my face.
At university, while I spent two months of my life writing an average five-page article about graffiti for the Watch, Lyndsie wrote a feature about new security measures for LSAT testing that won her an award for CUP (Canadian University Press).
She did a summer internship at Canadian Living after her third year of school and the next summer, interned at the newswire Canadian Press in Halifax. Then (my favourite part!) she traveled for ten months in Europe, working, WWOOFing and taking a break (although she did express slight regret over not doing ANOTHER internship in that time. Oh journalists…).
Over beer and grub, we catch up on the goings-on of our other contemporaries. One’s at CBC, another in New York and a handful up North doing the make-more do-more journalism thing.
As for Lyndsie, she updates certain pages of the Yahoo! website (“Tech, and most unfortunately Pets”) as well as running a twitter account, assigning stories to bloggers and editing. It’s a job, with words, so she can’t complain.
And, as she puts it, “We probably graduated at the worst possible year for getting jobs.”
I believe her.
Speaking with Lyndsie makes me nervous. Hearing about her qualifications, and failed experiences getting work at the big papers, makes me think my journalism prof was right when he told me, nicely, I didn’t have a chance in hell getting an internship at the Star.
Lyndsie even orders better than me: her sweet-potato fries look way more appetizing than my beet-tomato soup.
“Oh, Lynds,” I say with a sigh, probably looking extremely desperate.
“You’ll be fine,” she says. “The best advice is don’t take anyone’s advice.”
Even on ordering food?
(Are you doing something else than living at home looking for jobs? E-mail me! I’ll probably write about you…)
The Batting Cage
A fellow King’s College grad and now (sometimes) working journalist, was kind enough to share his thoughts on the job prospects in Nova Scotia.
I sent him a message shortly after returning from travelling on the most credible of communication avenues, facebook. I wanted to suss out the enemy before heading into battle.
He got back to me with the following report:
Angelina,
I am well, despite unemployment.
I’m here in Halifax, and I’ve been writing intermittently while looking for more permanent employment. Articles off/on for Metro and occasionally The Coast, plus a weekly column for Spacing Atlantic (which doesn’t pay, but gives me some online cred and allows me to write How I Want To write). Even some fiction (!) when the mood strikes.
Fort McMurray (He worked at a small-town Alberta paper last summer) was a joke, but good experience. Terrible experience, but good experience, dig? I worked the Crime and Entertainment beats. Ha.
It’s not sad that you’ll work anywhere. It’s a reflection of the times. I used to be picky. Those days are long gone. I’m looking for anything that involves me using half my brain, and a lot of things that will not involve that.
And I’m not anything like a journalism expert, I just lucked into a few gigs. But honestly, I’m rather disenfranchised with the whole thing. If skilled young bucks who will work for peanuts a year are languishing in their respective unemployed malaises (mailaisii?), while people like Thomas Friedman jet around the world to produce a book based on a cliche, why bother?
That’s at my most cynical. But every time I find myself in a news room for a day or two of paid work (so, maybe once a month), I remember how good that feels, and it almost feels worth it.
So, there are my things to tell.
Now Italy – politically screwed up, or irrevocably politically screwed up?
But seriously, I’d prefer to hear about your life right now. What has it been, a year?
Well, I hope he’s been reading this blog. I’m sure his misery would love my company.