What is gainful unemployment?

gainful: profitable, lucrative unemployment: the state of being unemployed, esp. involuntarily or the numbers of people without work According to Dictionary.com, gainful is a word that should be primarly defined in capitalist economic terms. Continuing the trend of defining words with a subjective capitalist lens, the definition of unemployment includes a reference to the involuntary nature of being jobless. But what if the two were put together? What if the unemployment was voluntary? What if the unemployment was not a period of worklessness or worthlessness, but a gainful period? What if the focus of all work, productivity, profit, and gain had nothing to do with an economy of money, and everything to do with a personal economy of soul and internal growth? This is the journey I started on January 19th, 2007. I'm not sure when it will end, but I will write about my experience here until it's over. This explains the "what." This blog will explain the "why" from the beginning, and will show what new "whys" develop as time goes on. Thanks for reading.

Tuesday, February 6, 2007

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.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)