9
May
2010
Rookies 9.03.10
Happy day-before-I-go-to work-day readers!
That’s right. I am one of you now. Well, some of you.
For those of you still unemployed, I want to invite you to keep the unemployment diary pages filled. Just because I now
I'm ready are you?
have a job, doesn’t mean there aren’t others to make you feel better about hating/not having work.
That’s why for this last entry, I’m passing the torch. Well, not so much the torch as the hours of picking my bum and looking at job boards.
Enough about me. More about you.
This Sunday, I bring you two stories of fellow unemployees and their unemployment narratives.
Then, a little advice from an expert. Lets end this blog with a spark of hope. Unemployment isn’t that bad anyway, as I’m sure I’ll realize once I start punching in Monday through Friday. I feel another blog coming on.
Enjoy these tales from the unemployment front lines.
Thanks for reading. It’s been a slice. Time to buy some pie.
Marcus “Cous” Kaulback and I went to high school together and only really chatted drunk at parties. He’s three years older than me, and was therefore cool and unattainable. When our life paths converged once again last summer, this time at a party in a small town in the Netherlands, there were no high school politics to navigate.
We were both in a weird Dutch town, completely surprised to see each other, and had a buttload of catching up to do. We did some that night, and then some more when I joined Cous and his girlfriend Lauren for a trip in the van they were driving in Europe (they had come to the Netherlands to pick it up. Me, to visit a friend).
As we drove around the Italian countryside (here is a blog entry Cous wrote about the experience) to a quaint parking lot in Cinque Terre where we spent the night drinking wine and eating pasta, we did not talk about unemployment at all. Instead, we told traveler’s stories (Cous and Lauren had just come off two years teaching in Korea and I had just come back from a crazy French farm) and acted like vagabons, peeing in the parking lot bushes and begging restaurants for ice to keep our food and beer cold. Those were the days.
Now, back in Canada, our dialogue has changed. Cous and Lauren are currently trying to make a go of it in Vancouver, and last I heard, they’ve decided to avoid finding a job by going to school again.
Cous sent me a little diddy from across the sea I’d like to share with you all. Cous, I wish we were still listening to Roald Dahl on tape. In the meantime, someone hire this bloke! He’s good for it.
Now over to you buddy:
“There are countless things that distinguish Ang and I from each other: I’m tall, she’s not; she’s a girl, I’m not…really, the list could go on and on. But the most striking of these differences, and the one most topical to our discussion here today, is the amount of ambition we each have: she’s got a bootload of it; me, I’m content enough to just try and figure out what’s meant by a “bootload.
Ambition is a funny thing though, and in some instances, it reveals itself in spades. In my particular case, when it comes to getting concert tickets or flats of beer, I might just be the biggest go-getter in the county. But when it comes time to “job-hunt”, my determination heads South, and not just for the winter. Don’t get me wrong though, I have dreams…and you won’t get anywhere unless you have dreams. My biggest worry, however, is that I possess initiative enough only to try and realize them in sleep.
That moustache was probably styled with cheese. It's true. I've seen him do it.
I’ve been unemployed now for 11 months, nearly to the day. For the first nine and a half, I wasn’t too bothered with my situation; only recently have I begun to feel a bit aimless. I think I’ve followed the two classic steps of the jobless – extreme happiness at the prospect of total freedom followed by a state of dejection at the prospect of having no prospects – to a tee, albeit at a much slower pace. What has taken me almost a year to realize, I should think most unemployed persons figure out in the space of about three weeks. Perhaps my laziness has affected not only my chances of finding work, but also my ability to feel badly when work eludes me. Which brings me to my next point: laziness is an affliction, one which, at its extreme, can and will kill you.
Like say if the Germans are coming, and all your able-bodied and busy-bodied loved ones are pissing off, heading for the high ground, said affliction might force you to flatback it for a while, sneak in a well-deserved nap. (You might do this under the pretense of…no, forget it, people who have been struck down with the Lazy Disease rarely, if ever, feel the need to justify their inactions.) Then your tombstone wouldn’t read that it was the Nazis who got you, but laziness. And guess what…it would be right.
I’m Marcus Kaulback, and I need a job.”
Here’s a tale of my friend Simon Love’s long struggle with unemployment. Enjoy.
Unemployment wasn't always a party for Simon.
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And now, for the advice:
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