One last thought...

I know this blog is officially "done" but would it really be my blog if I didn't break protocol somehow? I was emailing with a friend about the end of GU and what had happened in my life and we were talking about how nutty it can be where you end up; you really, really never know where life will take you. And he summed up in 6 words what took me 50+ days to trip over to figure out - in 6 words, stated the best way I think you could possibly live life:

Be free, be honest, be you.

Thanks, Ricardo.

Day 58

It's time to end Gainful Unemployment. Did I find a job? Nope. A job found me. It's not really taking the form I expected, because I have no employer. I'm just responsible for myself, and sometimes I get paid and sometimes I don't. I've decided I'm no longer unemployed for these reasons:

1) Contract work is picking up and keeping me busy - and paying the bills. I actually have submitted proposals now instead of hoping someone remembers me and thinks up some work for me to do.
2) I have steady volunteering hours at Second Harvest Gleaners and The Learning Corner. The nice thing is that I just don't go in if I don't feel like it.
3) I am working for free with the Grand Rapids food reform folks on trying to build up their internal network and communication with each other.
4) I am going to start doing some volunteering with the Community Media Center here, and might possibly teach some classes there on documentary filmmaking (this is TBD).

Life doesn't look like what I imagined it would a few months ago when I started this blog, but I think that's a good thing. I'm glad that I got to be surprised. I've learned a lot of things in my stint of unemployment, and I'll put a few of them out here:

• Taking the leap was worth it. It just might always be worth it. -- It was a huge leap for me to up and quit my job and move in with TM and BA and hope that it all worked out. I've never risked so much before, and my life is scads better than it was a while ago, minus still missing my friends. Yes, scads. I may have made the word up but it conveys the enormity of the situation.
• The only way to worry less about money and having a job is to not make any and not have one for a while. -- I struggled a lot with understanding that worry does no good but still feeling it these last months. After facing a lot of the things that scare me enough to worry about and seeing that it's not the end of the world and noticing once again that Somehow, Everything Will Work Out, I've started worrying less. Yoga Journal would have you believe that you can 3-step meditate your way out of worry and the things that bind you, and old-way Christians would tell you to "give it to Jesus," but I think the only way to worry less is to get face to face with what scares you. Yesterday I heard that a contract that I thought was pretty much a shoe-in I may not get after all. I felt a prick of concern, and then realized that if I didn't get it, I could feel let down but then move on. A week ago I hadn't even heard about the contract - how could it really make or break life?
• Success is lame. -- At least, my old definition of success was lame. My old defintion had a lot more to do with living up to someone else's expectations, someone else's dreams, someone else's idea of success, some American version of success that was all tied in with money and cyclical spending, some version of success that confused being with doing, rather than it did with anything like living for things bigger than myself and true freedom. True freedom. Freedom from greed, from desire. Freedom to say, "I thought this would work and it isn't, so I'm changing." Freedom to quit. Freedom to stop being selfish. Freedom to love. Freedom to be outside of boxes and labels (e.g., nonreligious/spiritual/Buddhist/Christian, etc. e.g., vegetarian/meat-eater/pescatarian/slow foodie/locavore/vegan, etc.. e.g., unemployed/self-employed/employed. e.g., success/failure/climber/Yuppie/dues-payer.)
  
• I still have a ton of work to do. -- I was nosing around on Facebook this afternoon, checking out what jobs all my friends I haven't talked to in a while are doing. Most of them sound like they're doing really cool stuff, and I got a little worried about if my life was boring or if I sound like a failure in comparison. Have I not learned anything? Why am I so...so...human?

I'm not sure what I'll be up to next, but I'm sure there will be a new blog at some point. I always seem to have some kind of learning bent. I'll probably post random bits back at nurkdenflurn until the next focused writing. I'll make sure to link it up when that happens. Thanks to those of you who read, commented, supported, commiserated, and pushed me!

Day 49

You may have thought that I'd found employment by now, but it's not true. I haven't been keeping up blogging because I've been too busy...well...living. There's been a lot going on in life and in my neighborhood that has kept me up and away from the computer. Here's a quick snapshot:

• I finally got my desk put up in the tiny small front room, but didn't have wireless access in it and don't like dragging my laptop around.
• TM and I are watching his ex-dog Harold from mid-March until the end of April. He's a really sweet dog, and I've been spending my blogging time walking him and nursing his ACL injury.
  
• I've been rehabbing old furniture.
• It's gotten warmer outside.
  

But those are all little things. Here are the major reasons why I haven't been on here:

• I started my job search in earnest. Shockingly, it's been taking up time. I find it amusing that it can take up time to get nowhere with it. It's been semi-disappointing. One of the meetings I had with a person at United Way in this last week or so was kind of promising. She told me about their executive loan program that I might be able to do in the fall. It's a paid fundraising crash course that runs from July to November. It might be interesting if I'm still out of a job by then. She did inform me that I'd have to take out my lip ring: "This town is too conservative for that; I couldn't send you out to businesses like that." I informed her that the moment when I think that something on the outside defines who I really am is the moment when I need to reevaluate my life in a serious way. She shut up about it after that.
• There was a gunfight over drugs half a block away from my house.
• Then a couple nights later, 3 men broke into my neighbor's house and beat up her boyfriend and trashed it. She came running over hysterical and I took care of her traumatized daughters while she called the police. It was about a 2 hour ordeal. Later that week the girls came over with thank you cards. "Thank you for everything." "Thank you for saving my life." They were written in big block letters like the kind I used to write, only I would give them to my dad for his office and they'd say things like, "Ski daddy!"
  
• 2 days after all of this I did my first fast. TM, BA, and I all fasted together for 24 hours, drinking only water. I learned a lot about myself and my relationship to food. I thought a lot about what my job in this neighborhood was. That was a Sunday.
• The Wednesday after my first fast, I heard Shane Claiborne speak. Shane Claiborne - celibate and ok with it because he connects to people through community, advocate of the simple way, lover of people and earth, own-clothes-maker, bringing new meaning to "dirty hippy," able to make a nonChristian like me listen up and be curious about his faith - Shane Claiborne who's really living down and dirty Mother Teresa style in Philadelphia, and making a difference. Of course, I heard him at Mars Hill (see GU's Approved Orgs on the side!) so it's really no surprise. But I was thrown in turmoil after it because so many of the audience questions seemed to me to really be asking, "OK, I want to become intimate with the oppressed and help out too. I want to be a revolutionary too. I want to. My heart is in it. But can you tell me how I can do it without changing my life too much and without it being very hard? Can you please show me Freeing-The-Oppressed-Lite?" And I reflected on all that had happened in my neighborhood and about how hard it was for me to do something so simple like a 24 hour fast and I thought, is this me? Do I want Revolution Lite? Is my struggle in life that I want to be this change, but I want Revolution Lite? And if what is really bugging me is the principle that everybody wants everything to be easy, what am I supposed to do about it? I'm always bothered by the principle of things, and I'm not sure if this is something I'm supposed to "overcome" or if I'm always bothered by it because somewhere in there is the secret for what I should be doing with my days.
  
• So I applied for a Community Organizer position in my neighborhood and I'm supposed to talk with the one Community Organizer here soon. Cross your fingers for me.
• I started volunteering. I volunteer at Second Harvest Gleaners where we're working to end hunger in Grand Rapids and at The Learning Corner at Wealthy, where I teach people trying to get their GEDs how to write. More on these later.
  

And furthermore, on page 98 in The Overspent American, Schor lays out the new (or not so new?) definition of American progress. And it struck me that the reason nothing in America is sustainable, the reason why everyone wants their business to be Big Big Big, the reason why people want to have their cake (e.g. SUV) and eat it too (e.g. enjoy a clean environment) is because people love the idea of sustainability...but tucked neatly away by some kind of cognitive dissonance that is too horrible for us as a society to face is the truth that our idea of progress is antithetical to sustainability and until Small is the new Big, until Loving Walking Community is the new Suburbia, until Local Food is just called Food, etc etc etc -- until we're reconnected with each other, the earth (and God?) and that's the definition of progress and that defintion has nothing to do with accumulation of wealth, nothing here can ever be truly sustainable. Why do we want what we don't need? Why is this agenda set? Who ever thought this was a good idea?

Also, if you haven't read Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, you have to make it your next book. Have. To. Read. It. Pornified is next, along with several other books that I have on the cue. But to be fair, here's some criticism.

Day 39

I was just taping in all the little scraps of paper that I collect and keep for my journal, and taped in a fortune from some Chinese food I recently ate:

You emerge victorious from the maze you've been travelling in.

Finally, some good news!

Of course, it was situated right next to:

There is a prospect of a thrilling time ahead for you.

I am thinking that it would be best to take a glass-half-full perspective on that one.

Day 38

I haven't been writing as much in this blog as I was at the start because I lose interest in things after a while. Perhaps it's a sign that I am more a part of my disaffected, ADD generation than I thought. The newness of unemployment has worn off, and I've started asking some different questions as I feel the craving for employment rising like bile in the back of my throat. I jokingly said to someone else the other day that I was ready for another job because I wanted to "be able to bitch about my job and the people I worked with like everybody else." I'd love to be miserable just like everybody else; it's so familiar and is the glue that cements our hideous excuses for acquaintance-based social circles. When in doubt, start bitching about the personal suffering you created for yourself by agreeing to act in a system you bought into before giving it a hard look.

Dark social commentary aside, I've started asking things like:

Why am I ready for a job now? Need for social interaction. Need to pay off student loans.

What kind of job do I want? One where I get to go to work, do interesting stuff with at least a few interesting people, and come home and not think about it much unless I feel like it. One where I don't have to work ridiculous new-American-industrial-age hours. One where I can take time off according to my idea of time off, whether that's paid or not.

What kind of work do I want? I still don't know.

Why don't I know, after a biblical almost-40 day period of soul-searching, what kind of work I want? Is it that I could be happy doing a lot of things, or that I would be happiest as a societal separatist...a wacko farming with my beloved, clothed in a burlap sack? Maybe. But I think I'd prefer a cashmere sack in the winter and a bamboo sack in the summer. Maybe it's because I still don't have a good idea of all that there is that's out there.

Why is it that I'm still concerned about appearing successful (having an important-sounding job that does social good while getting paid enough not to be a pauper), especially when some of the successful people who I don't want to "let down" are some that are the most miserable? Because I clearly still have some internal work to do.

How stressed out am I going to be if by April I still don't have a job? It depends on if it's warm enough to be hanging out at the beach during the day.

On the bright and unrelated side, I have found biocompostable flatware for the picnic reception at TM's and my upcoming nuptuals. It is by far my favorite part of the planning so far.

Day 32

I skipped Days 26-30. I went with TM to Indianapolis in the middle of the week. He went to a conference and I hung out in bookstores, reading about my latest obsession that I've had time to explore since being gainfully unemployed: porn and sex work. As a feminist I can't decide if I'm for it (freedom of expression, some women find their empowerment through it, etc.) or against it (based on exploitation and objectification of women, feeds false consciousness, turns a beautiful thing into a commodity, cheapens sex, etc.). It turns out, feminists can't decide either, as I've now read a few articles and books from both points of view. And both camps end up decrying the other side as "not really feminist." Gee...I wonder why the female revolution has faltered?

Anyway...it was actually a really mentally hard week, as this one is shaping up to be. I'm having a hard time staying excited about this gainful unemployment shtick, especially after being rejected from my first two applications (one I never heard back from and the other I sent in the resume and cover letter the day after they filled the position, which they were kind enough to tell me). The good news is that I've only heard about these positions through people that I've talked with, so I can't say it's truly been for naught. I also received a mysterious email requesting a meeting with me instead of the other way around, but I have no clue who this firm got my name and background from. We'll see how that all ends up.

All of this is to say that I'm ready for my gainful unemployment to end. In fact, I'm not sure it's been so gainful this last week and a half. The problem is, I'm not so sure still what it is that I'd really like to be doing. And maybe that's part of the lesson here: it doesn't need to be figured out. I don't need to be figured out by anyone, including myself. I can just do something...and if I don't like it, I can stop doing it. I should just stop being so damn picky and pick something.

To clear my head, I headed out to Frederik Meijer Gardens today. It turned out that one of my favorite artists was the featured sculptor this season: Patrick Dougherty. I began my visit inside a cathedral/labarynthian stick sculpture with the smell of lilacs from the adjoining room drifting in. I walked through the arid gardens filled with cactuses and rock. There are plants that grow disguised as rocks (clever!). It felt so incredible to be in this bright, warm garden looking out at gloomy lower Michigan's idea of pre-spring winter.

After the arid garden, I took a detour into a wetter garden filled only with carnivorous plants from South America and doomed midwestern ants. Then I walked through asmall path of flowers so perfect and colorful they seemed fake.

And then...there was the famed butterfly gardens. Only available in March and April. My favorite? The butterfly that looks like a green plant, the monstrous butterfly with layered wings in wild colors that only flies at night, the black lacey butterfly dark as pen ink with sparse designs...all beautiful. But my favorite was the medium sized butterfly all brown with designs drawn in black tightly together on its wings, like the Roots drawing I loved so much a month ago at the UICA. It had a few dark blue and off-white blots on its wings. I was grand without being flashy, intricate without a million colors, elegant without dizzying layers and trailing bits. Confident of itself, it didn't seem to need all the accoutrements of the other insect-birds.













I admire this butterfly. This is the butterfly I aspire to be. But lately, it doesn't feel like I'm doing the best job. My heart has been struggling with an egotistical need to find a job that says "I've made it" all the while knowing that I would be happiest working in a small, local place where I could do a great job in the day and then go home at night free to forget all about it. I feel compelled to take assignments jet-setting around to prove...what? I thought I'd love it, which was fine. But it turns out I don't - it gives me a headache, tires me out, makes me feel disconnected and depressed. It turns out that isn't who I want to be, which is also fine...so why do I still care at all to force myself to do it? Is it about clinging to expectations I set up for myself and for other people to think about me? How do I let that go? Not should I, but how.

And "looking into my heart to find the answer" is not the how. I've been looking. The answer isn't there. Perhaps I should take some more good advice I've heard from a few rare gems: pick something, do it, and if you don't like it, stop doing it. Seems pretty simple. Perhaps I can do a few cognitive roundabouts to make it really fucking complicated.

Of course, this is all cart-before-the-horse talk - there's nobody really clamoring to hire me in this city.

Not a day, but a comment on the days in which we live

Eco-friendly fire
New from Ode Magazine, whose tagline is "news for intelligent optimists"

ENGLAND. The people at BAE Systems, Europe’s biggest weapons manufacturer, have joined a host of other companies in adding a department of corporate social responsibility. The result is environmentally friendly ammunition, including missiles that contain fewer toxic chemicals such as lead. According to BAE’s website, lead in bullets can “pose a risk to people.” The British Defence Ministry supports the company’s initiative and has proposed manufacturing missile heads that make less noise and grenades that produce less smoke in an effort to curtail noise and air pollution respectively. Money is also being spent to develop bombs that turn into manure.
“This is laughable,” Symon Hill of the Campaign Against Arms Trade told The Sunday Times (Sept. 17, 2006). “BAE is determined to try to make itself look ethical, but they make weapons to kill people and it’s utterly ridiculous to suggest they are environmentally friendly.” But the Ministry of Defence has the last word. “The concept of green munitions is not a contradiction in terms. Any system, whatever its ultimate use, can be designed to minimize its impact on the environment.”

Day 23-25

Day 23 was a great afternoon full of meetings following a morning of calamity (I cut myself on broken glass, set off the fire alarm twice, spilled things all over the kitchen, and had to run to my meeting all because I was trying to make a pot of soup that didn't even taste good when I was done with it). I met with a fellow who works in the Johnson Center for Philanthropy here in Grand Rapids. He asked me all kinds of questions about who I was, what I wanted to do, what I needed from a job, and what I wanted from a job. He said he'd see if a few phone calls he could make would yield anything. I left feeling like even if nothing came of it, it was great to sit down and talk with him because it helped me to organize my mind.

After this meeting, I had a more informal chat with someone from Bazzani Associates, a green builder here. I now know where to go to buy some shoes that don't make my feet hurt and that supports local businesses, and may have a contact for playing league soccer here. Yes!!! I just have to get my turf toe healed first -- hence, the new shoes! We talked in Global Infusion, which I always like going to because it's where I got engaged. :)

That was all Wednesday. On Thursday I met with some folks from the Grand Rapids Community Foundation. I just can't believe how open people have been to meeting me and talking about what I'm doing. It felt weird to be back in another foundation; even though this one was a community foundation and not another private foundation, it had the same kind of quiet, opulent feel to its offices and they were definitely the most dressed up of all the other people I've met with. Is this just a foundation thing?

Now, I feel that for being gainfully unemployed, my last 2 weeks have been extremely busy. After the Thursday meeting, I took off for the town I moved away from just over a month ago: Albion. I went and saw my friend perform in the Vagina Monologues and hung out with the Albion posse again. Isn't it strange how at the same moment, it can seem as though you never left and you left long, long ago?

Since I got home at 3 AM, I didn't do anything on Friday except put my spices into a cabinet because...after a little over a month...I now have a residence. It's going to be the place I've been staying, but now that it's decided, I get to UNPACK!!!!

I've also been thinking...even if nothing job-related comes of all of these meetings I've had in the past month, I can see a huge difference in myself from my first meeting to the last one I had. I am so much more comfortable talking to people. I am better at conversation, better at reading people small cues about when to go and when to leave, better at establishing a connection (but probably still not that great at that). And I am much, much better about going out and just talking. My first couple meetings I remember obsessively reading as much as I could about the people, taking notes, trying to memorize newspaper clippings, and thinking that I would need to spout as much of this as possible when I met with the person so that they could see I knew my stuff. I realized that they don't care. I still will review the company the person works for, but I don't feel the need to wow them with my knowledge of their organization...I think I may have seemed like a bit of a nervous ass in my first couple meetings. Oh well...live and learn!

I'm off for the weekend to get my taxes done with the help of my future father-in-law. Should be interesting.

Days 21 & 22

Monday was a triple whammy. I had a meeting with the fellow who oversees the Greater Grand Rapids Food Systems Council, and then had a meeting with the executive director of the organization it's a part of, West Michigan Environmental Action Council. Then, I went to lunch with the executive director of Mixed Greens, who I'd met with a couple weeks ago, to talk about framing the food system. Between her and her husband and I, we had an interesting conversation about communication, food, liberals and conservatives and framing, and what it might look like to have all the food activists in Grand Rapids come together. I left feeling so excited - like I might be on to something that would either turn into a job or be a great way to be involved in my new community. I also may have found a spot for the community garden TM wants to start!

I came home and made some phone calls and talked with some other people about the idea and that stupid familiar feeling of but this will never really work...I can't do it...it's too much for me set in. I don't understand why that defeatist attitude always descends. Maybe it's because I'm PMSing, which exacerbates my defeatism and depressive nature like clockwork. I'm talking atomic clockwork.

I woke up on Tuesday still in this funk...so instead of getting up and exercising I lolled in bed, only partially grateful for my chance to sleep in after several days of little sleep. It was a beautiful and warm day, one of those wonderful reprieves we get in Michigan this time of year, and I wanted to get outside and enjoy it. Instead, I had all kinds of piddly little things I've let go by the wayside, and needed to tie some things up, so I spent until 2:15 in front of this stupid thing. The upside is that I got my invoicing done. The downside is that if I'd gotten out of bed at a decent hour, I could have done both. How many times do we need to learn lessons?

I made it outside to run errands that I did by foot, which ended up being irritating because the postal outlet didn't take cash and my bank is jerking me around with being unable to understand how to replace my debit card that they cancelled because of some security breach (comforting).

But later, as I was sitting down to eat a good dinner that was made by TM and I after we got home from an afternoon walk, I thought to myself, "If my biggest worries are about how to get at my money, I'm really blessed, because I could have none to get at." After I requested it, TM and I have started taking a few minutes before we eat meals together to think about what it is we're grateful for, and I love that these few minutes give me a chance to have reality checks like this. I always feel so awkward doing it; it leads me to think back to the family graces before meals that always felt routine and empty to me growing up. I'm glad I have this time to think about all the ways in which my life is so filled with goodness and abundance so that I don't forget for too long that my little petulant fits about nothing are also another indulgence I have the ability to use. Now I have to get to where I don't need/want to use indulgences like that...indulgences that add no happiness or value or worth to life at all.

I may be working on that until I keel over.

But until then, I have some tomorrows that I can use to try. Tomorrow is Day 23, and I have 2 appointments.

Days 17 - 20

Phew. Days 17-20 (or Tuesday through Friday of last week) ended up being semi-as-I-predicted: a lot less like gainful unemployment than pseudo employment. I worked 6 or 7 hours a day every day except for Thursday and Friday, which involved travelling to Montana and then getting up in front of sometimes curious and sometimes skeptical audiences for 2 presentations and a workshop. I was so beat as I flew home on Saturday, but of course my mind was not in rest mode so it kept ticking away while my eyes checked their lids for cracks. Put another way, if my eyes were my mouth at that point, I would describe them as slack-jawed.

Cute analogies aside, I thought about how I was still considering myself unemployed, but was quite obviously working and getting compensated for that work. But it doesn't fit into what the box of employment had heretofore looked like to me. I'm interested in what I'm doing. I get to pick what it is I do, and say no to anything I don't want to do. I only get paid if I actually do something; just showing up and being a warm body in a chair for a certain number of hours doesn't count.

It really wouldn't be so bad to do this, unless there was nobody that wanted me to do any work for them.

I'm just starting to settle back in after a fast weekend - getting picked up in the airport and twirled around by TM like we were in the movies, as others smiled (and maybe snickered) around us. Then sock and snowshoe shopping. I replaced all of my socks. Being gainfully unemployed, I've had lots of time to notice how the socks that I wear do absolutely nothing to keep my feet warm, which leaves them feeling like glaciers. After being educated by my backpacker fiance, we went and bought me hiking socks made of corn and organic wool. This was the first time in my life that I've bought any clothing that wasn't a bargain basement deal, that I focused on the quality of the cltohes. It was a paradigm shifting moment. Shoes are next. The rest of the weekend ensued - relaxation, walking, going here and there, etc.

I haven't thought too much more about what it is that I'm doing, but tomorrow (Monday, Day 21) I think I'm going to have to. I have 3 meetings in a row tomorrow and they are all related to one another and to what I just finished doing in Montana...the timing seems "coincidental."

Days 15 & 16

Day 15 was Friday, the all-hallowed day of American workers everywhere. It of course is holding less of a worshippable position for me these days, but I still have a fondness for the day. I went to the gym in the morning and this old man named Bill came up and asked me about what the parking was like outside (I didn't know because I walked) and then started to tell me about what it was like in Singapore when he was there for military service and how he liked their disciplinary policies, how much he loved kids and how he fed homeless guys hot dogs every Tuesday at noon, and went to schools to tell kids who homeless people actually were. Then he invited me to come Tuesday at noon to feed the homeless guys hotdogs and said that I'd get to have one also when we were done serving. I asked him if they had veggie dogs and he laughed and said that he really couldn't get all fancy about it. I might go.

Then I had to go home and do some WORK! Am I still gainfully unemployed if I'm working on things I'll get paid for eventually? Hard to say.

Either way, I lolled about over the weekend as usual (planned the wedding with TM all day on Saturday, ate too much fritter on Sunday morning and paid for it the rest of the day) and woke up Monday morning in a stew. I got down to business: worked all day on PowerPoints, speeches, phone calls, etc. for the Montana gig. And the parts of the day I didn't spend doing that, I made phone calls and wrote emails to new people for new appointments, took care of loose ends, etc. It was a very businessy day. I kind of have this strange feeling that my gainful unemployment is taking a different turn. I think this week will have a strange feel since I will be preparing Mon-Wed for the Montana presentations on Thursday and Friday.

Day 14

Today was much better than yesterday. I got my ass in gear and wrote down some ideas I am having for volunteering. I have it narrowed down to 1) a women's shelter or reproductive rights kind of place, 2) the food stuff, or 3) starting a community writing center for high school kids and adults. I'd have to see if there was already one around, other than the one GVSU has for its students. So now I just have to do it.

Then after I did this, I went to a coffee shop to do some work for the upcoming Montana trip. It was so great to be OUT! I realized that after the huge snowstorm last weekend, I haven't really gotten out of the house because I went into hibernation mode. If I want to not slip into a depressive funk like the one I was going into yesterday, I need to be out and about. And that might require not hanging on to every last penny I have out of the fear that I will never be able to find a job and spending the money for a coffee to use the free wireless every place has. It was so wonderful to be around people and hear hustle and bustle around me while I worked.

I didn't work for too long. Instead, I realized I needed to find something to wear for TM's annual work party that is this weekend. I've put it off because I'm not a fan of shopping, especially on a fixed (make that "no") income. But, I went out and found a cute dress, and I bought a couple muffins and brought them out to TM's work for a cup of afternoon tea with him. I bought bran muffins so that he could eat a Michigan one and then understand when we go to NYC together why I rave about NYC bran muffins.

Tomorrow I'll have to really bust out the work. What an odd feeling.

Day 13

Today was not the best unemployed day I've ever had. I wrote that newsletter article early in the morning and then went to the gym and worked out and got home and thought to myself, "Now what?" I farted around and didn't do much and didn't feel motivated to do much. I felt lethargic and like I was coming down with a cold. TM got home and was going to head out to tutor his mentees and I was going to go to a discussion about the government, and just didn't want to. I am just worried and I have too much time for just myself but I can't settle on what kind of community involvement I want to have, and I really don't have any idea who is going to hire me when I want to actually get a job. And then I felt guilty.

This gainful unemployment shtick is such a ridiculous luxury. How many people in the world take the time to do whatever it is they feel like doing? And am I using it to its full potential? Or am I just dicking around? If I'm going to have the opportunity to do it, I better not waste it. I come from a rural, upper working/lower middle class background and I know that life can be a lot harder than this. My life has been harder than this. Life will probably get a hell of a lot harder than this. So I better appreciate this and suck all the joy and worth out of it that I possibly can.

But right now I'm just not in the mood.

Day 12

Today I had some paying work to get done. Mind you, I still consider myself gainfully unemployed. I am just picking up little bits of work to tide myself over financially that I won't mind (and will quite possibly even enjoy) doing. I am writing an article for a newsletter, and had set the interview that I needed to do for the newsletter for 8:30 AM. I know, I know...what gainfully unemployed person sets anything up for 8:30 AM? Apparently, this one. I made up for the early meeting time because TM and I forgot to turn the alarm on and I woke up in a panic at 8, swearing as I leapt out of bed and running to put my contacts in and brush my teeth. "This is the only thing I've had to do in weeks and I'm going to be late!" Luckily it was a breakfast meeting; I become subhuman without breakfast. One of the things that I liked about working was that it got me up earlier and now that I'm "used" to it, I like having more day in which to revel in the fact that I'm alive and able to be irritated by things like putting too much basil in my eggs or getting up too late to have time for a little mascara.

We met at Marie Catrib's, one of Grand Rapids' local food restaurants. I had turkish coffee and a yummy apple pear tart that came with their potatoes and I tried really hard to make sure she didn't notice the one piece of potato that I forked and sent skittering across the table and shooting onto the floor, scattering my hot sauce everywhere. It just didn't seem like something I should draw attention to. Anyway, aside from that the interview went well and our conversation about Grand Rapids put a little fire back into me for doing this networking thing.

Things in my life tend to happen after I do a lot of work that doesn't seem to be paying off. And then all of a suddent, boom, out of nowhere something starts going right. I usually chalk it up to dumb luck until I take the time to map back how the decisions I made and work that I put into a variety of factors contributed to this "stroke of luck." I think right now I'm in the middle of that "I'm doing all this stuff and nothing really seems to be paying off" feeling. And even though I recognize that this may be what's happening, I still possess the wonderful ability to talk myself out of it and think that this time might be an exception. I once heard a wise person say that the "what ifs" and "if onlys" are what keep us from the depth of joy we should have and the true freedom that is ours, which we feel we don't have because we rescind them on a daily basis to our worries and our doubts. I believe this is true. I am in wonder that I can believe one thing and still feel a fear stemming from something whose opposite I believe.

Days 10 & 11

Day 10 I'm sort of skipping, because all I did was get up late, go and take my sweet fiance out to a lunch that he paid for (I am gainfully unemployed, after all!) , and then come home to nap and read. Then I geared up for the real work of the day: finding a place to grocery shop that had a good mix of local and organic foods. I am also learning how to bake bread which is simultaneously easier than I thought while being just as difficult as I imagined. I have to admit that one of my favorite parts, aside from the therapy of kneading, is making the little divot for the yeast to sit in.

Day 11, our dear friend Monday, was another day all to myself. We got snowed in here in Grand Rapids over the weekend and the roads were still treacherous. The Blizzard of 2007, as our catchphrase crazy media dubbed it, froze up after dumping snow so the salt wasn't melting anything on the roads. I don't know what the news crews are going to do if there's another blizzard in 2007 but hopefully they'll be able to be creative enough to make up another name. My favorite headline was today's, "No relief in sight!" And this is after everyone has bitched about there not being any snow and how unnerving it was to be so warm and mild in Michigan this time of year. I wonder if journalists sit around and ask, if we aren't complaining or alarming people, are we going to run out of things to write about? I wonder if us media consumers like to take part so much in the mass gossipping and fear-mongering that our consumption patterns make news writers believe this is what we want. I wonder how much longer I could rant about the media on a blog that's suppose to be about gainful unemployment, not media reform.

Back to the topic. I decided to brave the icy roads and drive to meet my dear friend for a cup of coffee just west of Lansing simply because I miss her terribly. I miss all of my friends terribly, to be quite honest. One of the things I've discovered about being gainfully unemployed in a new city is that it can be awfully lonesome. If I was working somewhere right now, I would automatically be assured a good dose of human interaction for about 8 hours a day. Right now, I really have to work hard at being ok with having so much alone time, and really have to make my human interaction time a priority instead of something that is just there. It's another thing I've learned that I have taken for granted in the past. Even if there were some people at my previous workplaces whose status of "human being" I was unsure about, generally there were at least a few people whose company I enjoyed. It's become obvious to me how important conversations, shit-shooting, relationships, soap boxing, and general everyday chit chat really are to me...and I'm also realizing that it's important to have this with a range of people. I am guaranteed right now to have face to face interaction with 2 people a day (the people I live with). But I really think I need more than that, even though I love those 2 people dearly. I think I may like people and hearing what they have to say more than I thought. I may be a tidge less of an introvert than I thought. How odd.

Days 8 & 9

Day 9 isn't over yet; I still have yoga to go to tonight. And of course, dear old Day 8 has come and gone. I'm watching more snow coming down just outside the dining room window where I'm sitting to write this, and I'm feeling very content and at peace. I got back from the high of this weekend in a great mood, and was surprised on Tuesday to be slammed with trepidition. It felt like things were slowing down; I didn't have any more meeting scheduled, I was unsure of myself, I didn't really know again what I was doing.

What if they revived the debtor's prison and I ended up dying in there, cold and alone?

Yesterday I waited and waited for people to respond to emails and phone calls, requesting the pleasure of their company and good ideas over a cup of coffee. After waking up late and having bizarre nightmares, I went out on walks and went to the YMCA, where I now have a membership, to do some yoga. I was in a major funk because of some correspondence I'd had with a dear friend. Yoga didn't feel good to me, because it was different than the teacher I usually have, which is that dear friend, who I no longer live a short distance from. The instructor seemed like she had it scripted everything she had to say, and I got more of a physical workout than the body and mental "ahhh" and opening that I do yoga for. Nobody emailed me back or called me. I spent the day fretting over how to respond to my friend and over my future, which seemed to be darkening before my melodramatic, impatient eyes.

I went to a movie/lecture called "How to Eat Local in Michigan in the Winter" at the Wealthy Street Theatre. This lifted my spirits a little. I'm happy to be falling into the local food scene here more and more, and realized last night that food might be a sustaining issue for me for life. Maybe. In any case, I always feel drawn to it.

This morning I woke up with TM instead of sleeping late and made him breakfast and some coffee in the French press, sweetened with whipping cream and maple syrup. I sat down and worked on a letter to my friend and when I finally finished, I closed it on my computer, looked outside at the big fat snowflakes, and went for a long walk. I love living in a city with a big river. I bought a newspaper and then stood on one of the bridges, listening to the echo of the cars reverberate underneath the bridge and bounce down to the streaming yellow chunks of ice.

When I got home, I got on the phone and hashed out some points of business, but more importantly, I solidified the start of a new friendship. If I was feeling refreshed before, this totally puffed the wind back into my sails. I laughed to myself at the name of a person I'm supposed to interview next week for a small piece of contract work: it's the same person I received a voicemail about from one of my previous contacts, telling me I should call her to talk about Grand Rapids and what I'm doing here! I called her up, and we laughed together and set up a time for next week for breakfast, an interview for the story I'll be writing, and a conversation about community and happenings.

Then it was time for the most important part of the day: shoveling. I got outside and worked up such a sweat that I ended up taking my jacket off! I shoveled and shoveled and my arms were aching and my head was in tune with just the motions of what I was doing, turning over the events of the last few days almost as a sidenote that I wasn't paying much attention to. I watched some fellow shovelers chatting with one another, and then one of the neighbors came over with his little daughter and introduced himself, and we talked for a while. After he left, I leaned on my shovel for a bit of a break and thought to myself, what a great life I'm living right now. What an absolutely great life.

Before this stretch of gainful unemployment, I have always fit my life around my job or my schoolwork. That is over now. My job is going to have to fit my life from now on. I realized I haven't been bored once. Every day I'm busy and contemplative and meeting people and exercising almost without thinking and writing. Every day I feel nourished and even when anxious, at peace. Every day I am taken care of, and every day something good happens, and every day I feel I've been productive and have taken steps to live my life in a way that's more meaningful. Why would I ever want to work at a job I hated ever again, when life is this good?

And then I came in and made chocolate chip cookies.

Day 7

On Day 5 I was in Tennessee, in a bar shortly after noon throwing darts with my fiance's best friends. At first I felt weird being in a bar on a workday, but it didn't take me long to think to myself, not my workday! And I ordered a White Russian. It came to me in a glass the size of a water glass. They must have known.

After we finished up there, we went to a place in Nashville called the Basement, which is a bar-sized live music venue. Somehow, we lucked out and it was smoke free which is almost a miracle in Tennessee. All the way there I was coached about how live music was a whole new experience in Nashville, and that there are "1 million residents of Nashville and 3 million are musicians" trying to make it. Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band played first, and it was actually a small damn band consisting of a drummer who was the guitarist/lead singer's brother, who was married to the washboard player. Yes. The washboard player. I was already amazed enough with the weird way the guy sang and played the guitar, but to watch this sweet looking woman's face change into a demonic glaze as soon as her hands hit the washboard was so odd it was almost scary. She was wearing baseball gloves to which she had fitted metal points, and she played that washboard like it was going to go out of the style it's never been in. I loved it. They were nuts. My favorite song and the only one I could understand any words to were "Birdy's Cousin's on Cops," which was written after Birdy's cousin (Birdy=washboard player) was seen on Cops. Next was a cool group with an awesome violinist called Hopsing Project. The headliner, Ballhog, needed to pass the ball. They were missing members and totally wasted and self indulgent. What, play for an audience? No - we play for ourselves!

Anyway, to make a long story short, we were supposed to come back on Sunday. We started driving (I kept thinking "road trippin' with my two favorite allies/fully loaded we got snacks and supplies/it's time to leave this town it's time to steal away/let's go get lost anywhere in the USA...") and stopped off at the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln, just because there was a sign and we could. It was another stupid thing America did: they built a huge marble shrine around the tiny cabin he was born in. And to make it even better, the shrine was closed. Lame. We eventually made it to Louisville, Kentucky and stopped at the visitor center which wasn't supposed to open until Tuesday. But, in good southern fashion, the woman in the center let us come in and take a brochure and called some restaurants to see if they were open for us. We ended up at Proof on Main, a majorly snooty restaurant/art gallery/hotel. My arugula salad, octopus, and dark chocolate gelato was divine but the waitstaffs' noses were all so upturned that if they sneezed they'd blow their hats off.

But here is the true Gainful Unemployment Moment of the Trip: at dinner, TM and I managed to talk BA into stopping in Indy to crash with my brother, and blow Monday off. I was such a giddy unemployed git, absolutely bursting with the happy fact that I didn't have to rearrange a damn thing! My brother seemed slightly miffed that he had to rearrange his night, but he was a good sport in the end, like all good brothers end up being. How free! How wonderful!

I did go and listen to Wangari Maathai speak tonight, the first female Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of the Green Belt Movement in Africa. The thing I got out of it the most: I tend to be furious with the government a lot, and she did point out that governments are supposed to be the custodians of land and take care of it. But she went on to say that our laziness is just as big a contributor to continued environmental degradation as anything else. She also talked about tribal conflict in Africa, and how to the West it seems almost baffling that people can't get along, but she summed it up well after talking about how the environment is used and mishandled and parced out: when you have a large number of people competing for scarce resources, there will be conflict. It was her warning for the evening.

And today? I'm not doing a whole hell of a lot. I sent some emails and am waiting to hear back. I'm going to sign up for a YMCA family membership tonight. That's the extent of my plans.

Day 4

Today I leave for Tennessee. I decided last night that I would go with TM and BA on their trip to see the third part of their best buddy triumvarate. It was that easy - do I want to go? Am I invited to go? Yes and yes. Do I have to call anyone to get the time off? No! Do I have to plan for it any more than making sure I have enough undies and a toothbrush? No! So I'm heading out for the land of a smokers, vines, and country music in a few hours with not a care in the world. Really.

I am being a bit of a Domestic Goddess this morning...taking a quilt to the cleaner's, washing up dishes and scrubbing the counter, etc., etc. I was thinking about this the other day and came to the realization that I could easily slip into this kind of busy-ness crap during my unemployment, turning it from Gainful Unemployment to Keep-Myself-Busy Unemployment. There are all kinds of silly little things like this that I could spend hours doing. My files really need to be organized, it's a shame that the fridge is so dirty, maybe I can go through my mountains of pens and pencils to test the ones that work and the ones that don't.

But...this is not what my gainful unemployment looks like. I'm not a messy enough person to have organizing be something I do in order to help my life be more fulfilling. Besides, if I do all my organizing when I'm not depressed I won't have anything to do when I slip into a mood and need to be an Emotional Cleaner to soothe myself. Forward ho with projects, thinking, meetings, writing, enrichment!

But before all of that, I need a cup of tea.

Day 3

Today I felt like I *did* something. It was productive in the usual sense of the word. I got up with TM instead of sleeping until close to 11 in the morning and went to my first meeting. It was with a member of GRIID (Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy) and we met at the Wealthy Street Bakery, often mentioned by Rob Bell at Mars Hill. That's a whole other topic. I think I have a digression problem.

Anyway, over the best bran muffin I've had in Michigan (although sadly still not of NYC caliber) I had a great conversation with this guy about media literacy, media reform, consolidation of media, news analysis, coverage of the Iraq War, anti-academese language and most importantly - how I could get involved! This could be the first community involvement I do since I graduated from college, and I was really excited by it. I was also really heartened by discovering the tip of the iceberg that is the progressive community in Grand Rapids and West Michigan as a whole. I've seen pieces of it at Mars Hill when I go with TM, but because of my stereotypes that I have, it's hard for me to see faith communities as progressive. (Don't lambast me; I know that this is my own "junk" and it's part of what I'm hoping to work on while I'm here. Admission: I carry around a lot of anger based on past experiences with churches and the like.) Grand Rapids has this ultra conservative reputation of a boring small town city that worried me when I was getting ready to move here, but I have to say I haven't run into it yet. Sure, Sundays are dead but when the city opens back up on Monday, there's a whole lot of progressive stuff going on.

After I got back from this meeting, I got online and went to www.mediamouse.org, in which GRIID is situated, and spent hours surfing the Progressive Directory. I have a CSA picked out for the summer, coops to shop at, and new ideas for people to meet and talk to.

My second meeting of the day was with a fellow gainfully unemployed person who is taking a lot of time to travel around. I met with her at Global Infusion, incidentally, this is where I became an engaged person, and had a lovely cup of jasmine tea. We had a great conversation and she gave me lots of new people to talk to and places to go. I was pretty sure that I was going about this thing correctly, but it still felt really affirming to hear someone tell me that this networking stuff was exactly what I needed to be doing. It's just so contrary to the [ineffectual] way I've gone about getting a job before: plopping out the resume. I'm really hoping this works.

Day 2

Today I took even more time getting up after my unsettling day yesterday. TM got home and my mind cleared out a bit and we went for coffee and chatted about our upcoming wedding and how we need to make a plan sometime soon. But this morning when I woke up and ate another cinnamon roll, yesterday's panic and disquiet came seeping back in.

I checked my email and happily confirmed two appointments for information interviews for tomorrow and worked on a couple more from contacts I'd emailed last week. That made me feel better. Then I headed out to TM's work to take him out to lunch (sort of). We went to the Real Food Cafe and he gave me directions to today's destination: the Urban Institute of Contemporary Arts. The exhibition they have up right now is called Drawing No Conclusions...it's a drawing exhibition. I was blown away. There was some truly amazing art in this exhibit. One was a huge drawing called (An)other way to fail (or something like that) and it took me a little bit of looking to see it. It was of a woman's womb, painted a ghostly white. I don't know if it was about abortion, a miscarriage, or infertility, but it was beautiful and heartbreaking. There was a drawing called Roots done with a fine tipped ink pen and it was also huge. In the top right corner you can see a tiny bit of trunk, and then the rest of the drawing are the roots, which are coiled and moving and shifting and dancing all over the paper in tight circles. When you stand far away you can't see the detail, but you can see these shifting patterns of light and dark all over the paper. The artist must have gone through 50 pens. Then there was this small piece called Hair Follicle that looked really boring from far away, like a grey blob on paper. But when you got close you could see that it was drawn in spirals from the inside out, and the distance between the pencil lines was only a pencil line thick, and it was perfectly done. The neuroses and concentration it must have taken to finish this jumped out from the paper; there were parts where you could see the artist's hand must have started shaking.

After I left UICA, I headed to a place with a WIFI connection. Since I'm new to the area, I just stuck with a place I knew: the new Big Boy off the Pearl St. exit. But the wankers don't have any place to plug a computer in! I was frustrated at first, but I whipped out my journal and started writing about yesterday and some of the other things in my life that are going on. Since this is a public blog, all you get to hear about are the topics relevant to the blog: gainful unemployment.

Why is it so scary not to be working, after I had been so excited at the luxury and opportunity I had to do whatever I wanted on my own timeline? Why was I afraid I'd be bored and lazy? I think I was hit in the face yesterday with the truth that, at least for me, employment is like a crutch. I haven't been unemployed since I was 12 years old, and my last 2 years at my job-out-of-college was the first time I'd only had one at a time. Employment limits the freedom of time we have, but it gives the seeming freedom of income. But as it's been pointed out by Juliet Schor, we work a lot of hours to make a lot of money so we can buy a lot of things which means we don't have a lot of time nor do we really have a lot of freedom. Finding another way to live is part of my gainful unemployment.

The challenge I am faced with, the challenge that I've created for myself, is to learn how to be productive for myself and not for anyone else or for any boss. The challenge is to get in touch with my own rhythm of sleep, hunger, desire to be busy, need for rest, etc. -- and to do those things when I want to without guilt or compulsively. The challenge is not to be stressed about income and money, but to be more conscious of spending wisely and frivolously and reassess what that actually means, and to get further away from the make/save-make/save-make/save cycle of hoarding money for the sake of security and living on What Ifs instead of a model of wondering (I wonder what would happen if I tried...I wonder if I could accomplish...I wonder what this would be like...I wonder what this place has to offer...), which sounds like a much more interesting and engaged life than living like an armored car.

Day 1

Today was my first day of Gainful Unemployment, but it took me all day to figure out that this is what I'm doing. Friday was my last day at WKKF and even though I felt reassured all the way up until I walked out the door that this was the right decision, I still felt a little odd leaving and turning in my key card. This was really it.

I was good and distracted all day on Saturday with moving, which was a test in itself of my willpower and of TM's patience (TM= wise and supportive fiance!). I've only ever moved from college so was not prepared to move for the first time from a "Real Life Apartment." It takes longer than 2 hours...and I did not know this until about 2 hours into packing. We eventually

Sunday I was still good and distracted, hanging out with TM. It was an amazing feeling to know that I didn't have to get up in the morning on Monday and make a 1.5 hour commute to work and then carry on a long-distance relationship for the rest of the week. It was a not-so-amazing feeling to look around and see my crap everywhere and know that there is just no good place for it for at least a couple weeks.

Today dawned and it was fun in the early morning to see TM and his roommate off to work, warm and fresh homemade cinnamon rolls in hand, and then crawl back into bed until I was damn good and ready to get up. When I finally did rouse myself, I read in bed for a while and ate a second cinnamon roll. I decided I should make myself useful since I am crashing the place, so I cleaned up the dishes and some other crap. Made lunch. Called my mom and returned my friend CH's call ("Hey, it's my day off and it's noon and I'm having a freakin' beer; call me back!" was the message I got) and then did an hour of yoga. And then started to wander around the house and on my third pacing I thought to myself, holy shit: I need to get a job. What if I wait around too long and then can't find a job and my money runs out? What if this "information interview" stuff doesn't work out? But most of all, what am I going to do with all this TIME? I have no tasks, nothing to accomplish, no deadlines. I will spend all of my day alone until TM or his roommate return...until I move to my own place and then what if I see NOBODY for DAYS?!?! What have I gotten myself into?

I had thought that quitting my job and moving were the hard parts and the hard parts were over. This was my choice; this was voluntary. I had said from the outset that I didn't want to be back in the workforce until late February or early March-ish at the earliest. I have always felt like I didn't have enough time when I got home from work to do the things I wanted, to write and explore the world and my mind, to get involved in community...and now I am feeling panicked enough to go right back to employment (or at least try!). What's the deal?