Anti-Manchild Project #3: Get Myself a Job

Well, I'm back from my family trip to Italy, and nothing makes you want to work more like going to Italy. So now it is time to get into full job hunting mode. Probably the real cornerstone, and stumbling block of trying to gain my independence. The irony is that this necessary component to my personal freedom requires approval from someone else (if not an entire organization), in fact, it is totally dependent on it. With other goals there is much more leeway. If I wanted to publish a book of poems on my own, I could have. The details would have been hard to manage, but it has been and can be done. If I want to move out of my parent's home and just live on somebody's couch, I could do that too. If the owner of the couch wanted me out, I could try and find another one. I believe there are now more couches than employers in the United States. If I want to learn a language, it is still all about me. If I want to teach myself how to cook, start salsa dancing, or take road trips, I have a similar degree of flexibility.  The only one of my goals that requires outside approval as much as a job is starting a romantic relationship, though I believe there are still more single women in the United States than employers.

Of course, I don't believe a person is defined completely by their work and that when one is unemployed they have nothing whatsoever to contribute towards society. But economic reality remains and work helps fill up the hours. People who say life is short have never spent a long time single and unemployed. I have been trying to fill my free time with as much productive use as possible since coming home at the end of March. I have been writing, submitting, and studying Italian too. I interviewed for one job, connected with friends, returned to dancing, and did some reading. In addition there have been a few odd jobs, such as working as a test proctor at my old high school, Yorktown. It was an interesting experience, walking back and forth to spy on the students like a German commandant while reading Sophie's Choice during breaks. I'm still waiting for my check...

Anyway, back to the job search. It's hard to say what I am looking for, times have made me flexible. The current economic situation began almost as soon as a graduated from New York University (magna cum laude). Originally I had hoped to work in publishing, since that was where my interests and skills were. I wasn't trained to do much by NYU and what work experience I had involved summer camp counseling. Extracurricularly though, I had an internship at Folio Literary Management and was poetry editor for this publication. Unfortunately, the publishing industry imploded, in no small part because of the incompetence of its leaders, but that is another story. With my main prospect for a job derailed, I went looking for work elsewhere: temp agencies, doctor's offices, website writing, but was unable to find anything. Finally I got a series of small breaks. I worked as a data entry manager for a get-out-the-vote campaign and then had a brief paid internship for election security analysis. They were interesting, compensated experiences but nothing long-term enough to allow me to stay in New York City.

If the recession (and I don't care what the economists say, it's still a recession for most of us) has taught me anything, it is not to take employment for granted and to be willing to change career paths and industries with ease. I went from publishing, to data entry, to political analysis, and then settled on a job that kept me busy from late 2008 to October of 2010, writing questions and answers for Answers Encyclopedia.  It was good enough money for me while it lasted and I got to read a lot of interesting material. The job involved going through encyclopedia articles and finding bits of information people might want to know. I then wrote possible questions that these bits could be answers to. This way people searching for the facts could get them without searching a whole article. It was complicated to explain to other people (I hope I have done a decent enough job of it here) without looking like I was involved in some scam, but the company sent me checks that cleared, so in the end that was all that mattered.

The interesting thing about that job was that I worked from home and never saw my co-workers or my boss. I have no idea what any of the people I dealt with looked like. It was another lesson I learned from our new economy, working without an office, motivating myself, and putting faith in the Internet to connect people and get things done. For the older generation, the idea of work meant getting up, leaving the house, and going to an office, store, or factory. I know my parents more or less had this idea and convincing them I was, in fact, employed took some time. But now things have changed and workers today have to abolish all preconceived notions of what work is. The only thing that remains central to employment is that is involves getting paid, or it should. However the worrying rise of unpaid internships threatens even this basic notion. This is one change that can and should be fought.

But my job ended and because I was an independent contractor adrift in the new economy, I had no benefits from being laid off. I admit, and maybe it's just the American Protestant inside each and every one of us, that I initially felt more depressed at being laid off than when I heard my grandmother had died. I suspect in this country, that's not too rare. Without a job you tend to feel untethered and wonder what your real worth is. At this point I was in Montclair, New Jersey, living with the Book Doctors. In exchange for a room and a renewed sense of independence, I helped them with a variety of needs. These ranged from developing their social networking, publishing blog posts, entering contact information, and editing manuscripts. So I became an assistant in the trenches of the ever-changing publishing industry. It was a good gig, except it was unsustainable in the long run, since I was only being paid in housing and consultation.

So it was back to DC for me, because unlike Thomas Wolfe said, you always can go home again. Now with my family vacation and my brother's graduation out of the way, I have a long, clear, and empty schedule ahead of me that needs filling up with a job. Preferably something with set hours, near a subway line, and that doesn't involve sales. I can do a lot of things, but sales isn't one of them.