The Unemployment Diaries

Hill(arious) 30.03.10

Hill(arious) is my new micro-blog dedicated to funny things I overhear in my job writing reports about committee meetings on Parliament Hill. For those of you confused about the title of this blog, lest I remind you, being employed means employed in my field. Journalism. The one that’s dying. So don’t panic. The blog won’t end for awhile.

Today, shit got all new media. That’s right, Google was in da house.

The Canadian Council of Heritage (CHPC) had a committee meeting to help develop their study called “Canada and the New Media.” In other words, they brought in Google’s Canada Policy Council (this position exists?!?!?) Jacob Glick, to explain to old people why the internet isn’t going away.

For those of you not in the know, this is the way committee meetings works: A group of MPs (made up of a handful of Conservatives, iced with Liberals, sprinkled with Blog Quebecois, and topped with an NDP cherry) sit on either long end of the rectangular shaped tables. On either short end sit the Chair and Clerk, who control what happens in the meetings, and the witnesses, who plead why their cause should be considered in legislature.  Then the Committee asks questions, and the shit-show begins.

Last meeting I was at witnesses from Aboriginal organizations stated why the First Nations University of Canada (FNUC) should receive funding. Today’s meeting was Google arguing the internet makes a contribution to Canadian culture and that Government policy should protect rather than prevent the innovation it enables. Whew. Not easy when half the MP’s have their young, tech-savvy assistants writing their e-mails.

Google’s Glick made two main points: The internet is not going anywhere, and it leads to innovation. Ridiculous questions and comments included a Bloc Quebecois MP making the case that leisure and culture are separate and that the internet is only a place of leisure (Guess she missed Harper’s speech on Youtube, or Obama’s entire campaign) to a Conservative MP, who spoke painfully slowly about his old jobs selling “VCR tapes”, asking sincerely how Google makes money since he’s never given them a cent. No one had the heart to tell him he doesn’t control the stock market.

It was like watching Einstein teach the multiplication table to primary schoolkids. I get it. Different generations. Different skillset. But at this rate, we’ll be making our own avatars before the Heritage Committee wraps their head around the concept of online advertising.

Today’s winner was hard to choose. There were so many great moments: like when the above mentioned Quebecois MP would bust out obscenities in French she knew Glick couldn’t understand, when the above mentioned Conservative MP (who looks about 70) admitted he’s started watching Youtube, or when the retired school teacher Conservative MP smiled like a gitty baby when Glick agreed outdoor time was still better than Google time for our children.

I think, however, this one goes to the Committee Chair for his closing remarks on the meeting. He thanked Glick for mentioning his “constituent” Justin Bieber (brought up after an MP wanted examples of Canadians made famous from the internet), who he knows from his time spent on the Stratford Agricultural Society (the town Bieber is from). That’s right, the Chair (an old white man) told the room anecdotally  how the now 13-year-old Usher prodigy used to open the annual Ontario town fair with his song and dance. Then, one day, “the kid exploded, and everyone knew about him.”

“Kind of like you,” chimed in the Conservative MP to his right, chuckling.

The Committee Chair admitted to bringing up Bieber in an attempt to become famous by association. Meeting adjourned.

I relate to the Chair’s sentiment, as I spent most of the meeting looking over at the Globe and Mail’s Bill Curry (who buy the way doesn’t seem to have filed his story yet, unlike me) hoping his journalistic prowess would rub off. Bill? Are you listening? Can you hook me up? I promise to feature you on the blog…

I leave you with this, my friends. The one, the only, Bieberlicious doing a song I’m sure is dedicated to the Committee Chair (but that I dedicate to Bill).

And this, the full recording of the meeting, which I suggest you listen to simultaneously with Bieber’s music.

Birds of a feather 28.03.10

Happy Sunday friends!

Like many great artists ranging from Shakespeare to Jim Jarmusch have agreed “Nothing’s original” or in Shakespeare’s words: “There is no new thing under the sun.” Here’s how I realized that being a 20-something  aspiring writer is like thinking you’re the only person who likes the black licorice jelly bean. You might not think it, but others do exist.

Enjoy!

I’m here to follow my hunch. Being a freelance writer means having a dog-like alertness and persistence of interesting things. This story’s not new, nor is it very interesting, but trying to get published can require twisting a dry sponge for that extra drop of water.

I’m sitting at a coffee shop. You know the one with red and pastel blue walls, mismatched chairs and cups, art on the walls and personal touches like roses on the table. Your local alternative coffee shop. but, wait for it, minus the WIFI!!!! How do they do it when everyone takes a little internet in their coffee? Sprinkle a little “how does it change the atmosphere?” and “how do they survive?” over “is technology ruining the world or making it a better place?” and you’ve got a yummy story.

It’s been written somewhere before, but I may the first to write about this Ottawa coffee shop. Squeeeeeeze. I sit here typing on my laptop and waiting for the right moment to put on my journalism apron and get cooking.

A girl wearing brown leather shoes, a blue scarf, and big sunglasses on her head walks in and orders a coffee.

“Did you get my e-mail?” she says a little shyly to the curly-haired woman behind the counter.

“Yeah, sorry I haven’t gotten back to you,” she says. “I’ve been so swamped.”

“It’s okay,” says blue scarf. “When do you think you’ll be able to do it?”

An artist wanting to put her work up? A musician looking to play the open mic?

The curly-haired woman wants to meet up in a few days, but blue scarf is pushing for earlier.

“What about right now?” she asks, in that pushy-polite style I’m so familiar with. And then she says it. “I’m on deadline.” The words tumble out of her mouth like slow motion dominoes. I’m. On. Deadline. How could I not have seen it earlier?

Being a freelancer means forgetting about the competition. Being out of school means forgetting there are tons of people exactly like you doing worse and better jobs of telling stories you want to tell. In my home office (read: parent’s attic) and in my boss’ eyes (read: mother’s), I am the best and most talented writer in the world. I walk outside to the tune of bubbles popping.

“Um, okay,” the woman reluctantly agrees, in the way people who hate being interviewed do. “But I’m expecting someone.  Can we make it short?”

“Of course,” says blue scarf. Well played. Accommodate. “We can do just half an hour.”

They sit at a table close to the counter so curly-hair can serve the customers that keep coming in. I saunter to the nearby bookshelf and pretend to leaf through a Douglas Coupland novel.

Blue scarf fumbles with her recorder, making some bad joke about not knowing how to use it. Watching her is like realizing my life is a bad script, watching motions I constantly go through being replayed. She even looks like me, and I bet she listens to Arcade Fire and lives in Chinatown because “It doesn’t feel like Ottawa.”

“So you opened a year and a half ago?” she asks the curly-haired woman, who’s shaking her leg.

"Where'd YOU get your hat?"

Yup.

“Why?”

There were no places like this in Ottawa.

“How did you manage in the middle of the recession?”

I didn’t think about it.

I recognize my own interview style in her: friendly, but detached. Acting impassioned about trivial subjects. Nodding enthusiastically and egging the person on with “mm hmm’s” when I sense a good quote.

Blue scarf is doing it all, but something about her seems amateur. I’m not convinced she’ll get to the heart of the story: how the f#$% are you surviving sans WIFI?

I’ve got the ace in my back pocket as I watch my lesser self dance around the point. I plan it out: once blue scarf leaves, I’ll wait ten minutes, then approach curly-hair and say, “I know you must be really tired of being interviewed…” and we’ll share a laugh about how this is true, and I’ll convince her that my story angle is unique. She’ll be charmed by my informal approach and proceed to speak openly about her no-internet manifesto. The Ottawa Citizen will say  “good work newbie” after publishing my story (with the correct byline this time) and I’ll be one clipping closer to getting a job.

I sit confidently back at my table, leaving amateur-me to ask cotton candy questions before I bust out the jawbreaker. Then it happens. This time, hitting me like a slap in the face from Mother Theresa.

“What about you choice to have no Internet?” she asks.

I barely hear curly-hair’s response, which is muffled by my own anxiety of my doppelganger trumping me.

“Yeah, everyone’s just behind the screen and no one’s talking,” says blue scarf, trying to encourage some more golden material.

She wraps up the interview and even remembers to get contact info for follow-up questions. Both women are smiling and they shake hands.

Blue scarf is me: fumbling through the same interviews with the same types of people that will be published in the same places. We’re all competing for stories, bylines and the coolest sunglasses.

What sets us apart? What will make one of us succeed and the other go into “communications.” If she showed up at my house would my mother even know the difference?

She takes out her laptop and starts writing up the article. I, personally, would go somewhere else so my interviewee could let loose and I could regain my journalistic “neutrality” in another setting. But that’s just me, and though I may have big sunglasses, I’m not wearing a blue scarf.

A Home Run, of sorts…24.03.10

A Wednesday blog entry? I know, weird right. But you know I wouldn’t interrupt your hump day without something worthwhile.

I promised I’d save the header “Home Run” for when I found a steady journalism gig at a newspaper, but as that’s looking more and more unlikely, I’ve got the second best thing. I have my first article published in a daily newspaper. Whoop WHOOP! For those of you who know me might be thinking, “BFD, you’ve been published a lot before,” but allow me to explain. I’ve done magazine, website, and alternative weekly newspaper writing, but getting daily newspaper clippings is hard. The news swooshes by like Nike,  and pitching a timely story can be like trying to slow down a stationary bike wheel with your hand (which for some reason I’ve tried a lot): you keep getting beat down.

Other times, it’s just your name that takes a beating. I was able to bask in the glory of my story for the Ottawa Citizen

Can y'all see that?

about Fashion Week for five seconds before I saw it: ANGELINA CREPIN? Who’s Crepin? They got my fucking name wrong! It’s like meeting Justin Bieber and finding out he’s not a real person, just a marionette controlled by Usher. Hopes. Dashed.

Anyway, now the record’s set straight an you can all check out the fabulous story written by ANGELINA CHAPIN here.

News Item #2 is I have a job that’s the closest I’ve come so far to an on-staff reporting gig. I’m working for a group called Alpheus, that does reports of Parliamentary committee meetings. Sounds boring? What were you doing yesterday afternoon? I was watching MP’s scream at each other and rudely walk away from the meeting to take loud calls on their blackberries. Oh, and, the small little matter of $7.2 million in funding being cut to the First Nations University of Canada in Saskatchewan and a panel of witnesses pleading to the  Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development (AANO) committee for money back so they don’t have to close their doors. The news story is here. But mostly, I was distracted by the hot food being served in the back that said for members only. I think in a few weeks I’ll be part of the club.

News Item #3: To include you guys in on this exclusive experience I’ll be reporting the funniest thing an MP does at these meetings.

Yesterday’s winner gave me a warm welcome. While I was copying down names before the meeting started, a Bloc Quebecois MP leaned back in his chair more as if he were at a bar than a committee meeting and says to me “You owe me $10 for that.” That got him the “creepy old man award.”

That’s all for now kids!

Stay alert and find me a job!

21.03.10 A New Swing

Happy day-of-rest readers, because whatever you’re really doing tomorrow, you can pretend it’s going to work!

Continuing with last weeks theme of the virtual office, here’s a piece I wrote about an unemployed epiphany I had.

Enjoy, and pass my name on to the smart people you know and my pictures to modeling agencies.

Today I had an “aha” moment—a buzzword entrepreneurs use to describe the moment they figured out how to make money. Mine had nothing to do with getting rich. In fact, it meant being comfortable making almost no money.

It happened where most important realizations do: in nature. Adam and Eve learned being naked is naughty, Thoreau learned the meaning and life, and I learned if I’m going to enjoy unemployment, I have to be less uptight.

I should clarify that unemployment means I still haven’t found a steady gig in journalism, which is the challenge this blog is based on. I have been employed, as of now, entering names into an excel sheet for my mom’s friend for $16/hour (highest paying job yet!) and as of late shredding medical documents for another of my mom’s friends.

Journalism-wise, I’m a proud freelancer. What does this mean? In my case, I force myself to wake up at eight, read the paper, read the internet, check my e-mail, and write to editors when I feel I have the slightest hunch for a story. Sometimes they write back to me, and I write a story for anywhere from 10 to 50 cents a word (which I use to calculate that how many hours to put in so I’m not making less than $10/hour ). If I wasn’t drinking the wine in my parents fridge I wouldn’t be drinking wine at all.

It’s a tough biz. Being a successful freelancer usually involves having a career and contacts already under your belt or approaching the whole thing like a business. One of my journalism profs said it took him two years of solid pitching before he started hearing back from editors, and my photojournalism prof who regularly freelances says during the good periods he eats at restaurants and during the bad ones, ramen noodles. It’s extremely unpredictable, and I’m a person of structure (which is why you get a new entry of this blog every Sunday).

I’m at my desk at nine—the time I would be if I had a “regular” job. I’m working on a story and had just heard back from an editor with things I needed to change. I was waiting for a phone call back from the guy I interviewed so I could fix up the article.

Unfortunately, if people were computers they’d be the kind with an overheated battery: never turning on when you want and always turning off when you don’t. This is fine when you’re getting paid by the hour, but when you’re getting paid by the word, you need to be flexible. This means taking free time when you can get it, not when your boss says you’re free to leave.

After watching my cellphone bathe in sunlight instead of ringing, I realized I was the one that needed a tan. My mom had suggested I take a bike ride, probably noticing the lack of tapping or talking I was doing while sitting in front of my computer. As I thought of putting on bike shorts and heading out for a ride, Corporate Carol popped onto my shoulder.

“What if you miss the phone call?” she snaps, taking a sip of a double frappuccino.

Maybe she was right. I guess I should stay at my computer for office hours.

“What office hours?” says Laid-Back Laura, who obviously wears sweatpants. “All you’re doing is wasting time.”

It is really sunny…

“You’re supposed to be productive,” says Carole. “And productive means staying at your desk for business hours.”

“Productive means being smart with time,” says Laura, who I think is lighting up a tiny joint. “Do you want to be the kind of person who doesn’t enjoy life because they’re afraid….”

Wow. Laura was getting pretty deep, but she managed to drown Carole in her own coffee and get me to put on spandex.

I made a call to my friend and said I was going biking as if I was Pope Benedict confessing to Irish Priests for sex abuse in the church. “Kate. I’m going biking. Because. I. Have. Nothing. To. Do.”

I hang up and join the rest of the people with time to be on the bike path on a Wednesday afternoon: seniors, moms on mat leave, the homeless, and the me’s: people without steady work.

I used to be blind...then I saw the light.

I put on the Forrest Gump soundtrack and follow the path that lines the Ottawa river. The water is sparkling, a homeless man is throwing pinecones at giggling kids and I almost bail on a patch of snow that hasn’t melted.

Somewhere between Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” and Elvis’ “Hound Dog” I realize Laid-back Laura is right. This is fuckin’ fun and I’m not missing anything. Freelancing means taking sunny days when you can and working them when you have to. Being my own boss. I have nothing to feel guilty about. “Aha.”

I used to be blind. Then I saw the light.

I’m just one of the millions of people dealing with making their own structure. At least it’s not after decades at an office job like some. If you’re not a Laid-back Laura or a type-A personality that thinks you’re always right, making choices can be scary. But since virtual offices are the new offices (according to this article by INC, which interviews young, tech-savvy CEO’s over skype who run companies without office space), I’m glad I’m learning early.

When I get back home, I check my phone and find I haven’t missed any calls. Feeling uninspired at my desk, I decide to go to a coffee shop, and tell Carole to fuck off when she said I’d lose time on the travel. NO ONE IS CALLING ME I yelled at her, and then took a toke of whatever Laura was smoking.

By the time the person I needed to speak with called, it was after five, probably the end of his regular work-day. While people around me drank beer for St. Patty’s day on sunny patios, I typed like a madwoman for longer than I should have, probably driving my hourly wage under $10. At ten, I met a friend at a pub, and let him decide when we left. Tomorrow morning, I had nothing to do.

AFTERTHOUGHTS

If you’re planning on going into the freelance biz, here are some tips from my mom, who’s been freelancing since she quit her job working for the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) since (tk). Though she does more editing and consulting than writing, she’s still a pro and this is one of the topics I will take her advice on:

1. Always get dressed. If you wear pyjamas you won’t mentally wake-up.
2. Exercise. You get contact with people and endorphins. Plus, you can laugh about the people who can’t make the nine o’clock class because they’re in an office.
3. Milk your contacts. In her case, she had ten years worth of them from an old job, but be creative and think about who you know.
4. Remind yourself that you don’t have to be involved in office politics.
5. Remind yourself that you’re not drinking scotch and eating chips at ten p.m. because you just got home and are too stressed and tired to cook. Drink scotch and eat chips because you’ve freed up the time to do it.

Here’s some inspirational music from the Forrest Gump so you can have an epiphany of your own.

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The Virtual Field 03.14.10

“Jesus Christ what’s he doing here?!?” says the woman sitting across from me. It’s her loudest outburst since I’ve sat down, but she’s been consistently alternating between mumbling and loud exclamations while reading her book. The woman to my right whose overweight with short hair keeps throwing me knowing glances to validate our table companions craziness. The guy to my right is reading a nature book and never looks up.

I’m at the Parkdale Public Library in Toronto, a neighborhood populated with addicts of various kinds, the working class, flannel wearing hipsters (the environmental type), and roti shops. My friends Kate and Ruth just moved into an apartment around the corner, and for the next few days the library is my virtual office.

One of the great things about freelance writing (which I’m not considering employment because I can barely buy a bag of chips with my pay) is that you have “freedom” from the 9-5 ball and chain.

Last Tuesday, I put my virtual office, usually stationed in my bedroom that adjoins my freelancer mother’s home office, and put it in a backpack. My mom’s freelance is considered employment because she put me through college and her desktop makes things feel more permanent.

Wednesday morning, I grab a cup of coffee, walk past the security guard in the tan uniform, and plunk myself at one of two little desks near an extension chord. The Parkdale Library is your typical community centre: A small room with big wooden tables, scattered newspapers, and lost-looking people on blue plastic chairs. The walls are painted brightly and there’s a plant to liven things up. A sign on every table says “We’re not responsible for stolen items.”

My first day went off without a hitch, as I smugly sent in a freelance article I’m writing for the Ottawa Citizen, and another for Progress Magazine. When I checked my e-mail the next morning, I found out both were unsatisfactory, and instead of enjoying the Toronto sunshine, I dragged my ass in for another day at “the office.”

My colleagues were all waiting for me. The Aboriginal man with long black hair who sits half awake waiting to get on the computer and the man with unruly grey hair who I occasional make intense eye contact with from behind his screen. The row of ten computers in the middle of the room have a waiting station like an airport where people sit in rows of chairs before boarding the internet. Or maybe it’s just to keep warm.

At my desk, where people with laptops hussle to get near a chord (there’s even apparent class divisions in the Public Library), I sit for hours with my screen almost touching the rotating cast of colleagues that take their place across from me.  There’s the guy with a black hoodie and baseball cap who sweetly says it’s alright when I have my spread stuff onto his side of the table and the man with dark black hair who never looks up at me though we accidentally play footsies under the table.

Me sexually harassing a colleague.

There’s the colleagues I don’t like so much: the lady at the desk who has loud, condescending conversations with people everyone is forced to listen to, or the office rebel, who saunters in loudly saying he needs to use the can, and then somehow finds his way past the “employees only” sign on the door to the desk area making the security guard and librarians anxious.

There’s the guy with a bandanna and mohawk who loudly says “hello” when I walk past him, snapping me out of a daze, and while flipping through DVD’s says “Whoooa. You have Terminator two but not one?” Ultimately, I decide I like him because he gets out of some late fines by bullshitting the annoying lady at the desk.

My office atmosphere is colourful, but when I realize I have to do an interview, I search for a secluded space. The private room is already occupied by some guy slumped over textbooks, and after setting up shop in the kids room, one of the librarians frantically rushes me out as a class he forgot was coming files in.

The librarian, an overweight man who speaks barely above a whisper, asks the security guard to take me downstairs where there’s a room. I follow the Chinese man who speaks Mandarin under his breath through a series of locked doors and past a classroom where someone is teaching adults. Though bearing a holding cell resemblance, the room is perfect.

The only interruption is the teacher walking by to see what the noise is and me gesturing “I’m on the phone.” Don’t you hate it when colleagues drop by at the wrong times?

When I go back upstairs an old man using a computer is talking to a young guy wearing a rare hockey jersey seated across from him about the team. I don’t remember the name, because I don’t like hockey, but the sound of their voices was comforting. Community. I’m happy to be back in the bull pen.

I don’t get my work done, but I’ve been staring at the screen so long I can’t see and realize I haven’t eaten in hours. There’s no boss telling me to stay, so I shut off my virtual office and walk outside.

I’m home now. It’s Sunday night and I’ll be showing up to my old office tomorrow, a couple of feet from my bed. It’ll be quiet, the washroom won’t smell like urine, and my concentration won’t be broken my the woman screaming obscenities. Still, I’ll miss my gaggle of colleagues, and look forward to the next time I relocate to my Toronto office.

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.