Let There Be Light

I bought a lamp yesterday. Two, actually. It was a pretty big deal.

You see, a couple of months ago, the floor lamp in my living room stopped performing its

one and only essential function, providing light. Just like that. Not sure why. Maybe it got a better offer elsewhere.

Since my still-unemployed state means all purchases must be carefully deliberated, I held off on a buying a new one, using instead a battery-powered Brooklyn lamp I purchased in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. That proved a mediocre replacement at best. But I had to make do, even if my eyes squinted every time I read something.

My apartment in an aging, three-family home has no overhead lighting, and natural light barely squeaks through the east-facing windows. Thus, I need lamps, several of them in fact.

So when another lamp in my living room flashed and blew out the light bulb, I knew I couldn’t hold off any longer. I need light, even if the price was to be too dear.

Armed with a gift card I got for Christmas, I reluctantly headed to Target to browse the lamp aisle, finally settling on two lamps that were reasonably priced and reasonably attractive (in other words, not too tacky, cheap looking or just plain ugly). I also bought two light bulbs (which weren’t cheap, either). The $25 gift card and 5% charge card discount took a $62 total purchase down to a less-stress-inducing $37 bill. So, now I have light in my living room.

Purchased over a decade earlier (at Target, coincidentally), my old floor lamp did its duty admirably, providing light in the evening and standing sentinel during illnesses and job losses, only balking when its bulb died, leaving me to frantically search for a new one that I never seemed to have at hand. 

I liked it because its stem mimicked a tree trunk, with small juts of branches. It complemented the leaf motifs at the ends of the curtain rods I installed at the same time, as well as other leafy artwork of the autumn variety scattered in my small living room.

Its only failing was that it got old. The wire conduits that once pulsed with the electricity that transported light from the outlet to the bulb simply disintegrated, like brain cells damaged by dementia (or too many viewings of The Real Housewives of New Jersey).

Indeed, when I went to move the old lamp, its base broke into pieces of I don't know what. I lugged it downstairs, put it on the curb, to be hauled away by the garbage collectors. It's now been replaced by a sleeker, more modern version.

I know the feeling. It happens to people, too.

This rather dismal episode was just another reminder of what unemployed people go through on a daily basis. Every discretionary purchase is thoroughly and painstakingly considered: How much will it cost? Do I need to buy it now? Can it wait? Should I take from my savings to buy it?

I’m not talking about big-ticket items, like a new apartment, a trip to Italy, or a FIAT 500. Those, we realize, are mere dreams, fantasies unlikely to happen soon — or possibly ever. Clothes? Fuggedaboutit. Though I have bought underwear and some deeply discounted yoga pants. Job or no job, I like to maintain a semblance of a decent appearance.

Truthfully, I’m okay with cautiously watching my spending. As a jobless loser, I know I must focus on the basics: rent, food, car and health insurance. (Though I can’t be sure how much longer I can afford even those items.)

But when I can’t even contemplate purchasing basic and relatively inexpensive household items like lamps without getting anxiety and stomach cramps, then maybe you can understand how difficult it is to be a long-term unemployed worker, how shut out from the “much-touted” economic recovery we feel. It’s as if everybody got on the party boat and we were left at the dock.

Doctor appointments, dental appointments — delayed until the pain becomes unbearable or the symptoms persist extraordinarily.

When I did have a job, I can’t say I was a big, wild spender and lived rather modestly. I know the value of money and hate (too much) debt. Yet I knew I could make purchases like lamps without too much mental or financial trauma. Not anymore. Every. Penny. Counts.

Even when it comes to essentials like I food, I gravitate toward the cheaper cuts of meats, the cheapest versions of cereal and coffee. What’s on sale? Here I come.

There are other items I’d like to buy for my apartment, like new Venetian blinds.

But with no job and no one in sight, it will have to wait.

Winter is Coming. It’s Here.

As sudden as a thunderclap winter is here. It’s cold. It’s snowed; not Buffalo-seven-feet-holy-hell snow, but enough to remind us who’s the boss this time of year.

The cold is biting, cracking the delicate skin of your hands. The cold is like a wall of ice that you pound against but cannot move. Will it ever get warm again?

A rather mild, comfortable summer lapped into a warm fall. Were we fooled into thinking

winter would never come? So when it snowed — before Thanksgiving! — it was shocking, to the say the least. It was as if nature got the same memo as retailers that want to speed up the seasons to get shoppers to buy more and earlier. So there was snow.

Mere days ago most trees wore their autumnal patina proudly, looking like gold and red bobbles atop spindly trunks. Now, the rain and wind and yes, snow, have stripped the trees of their leaves, floating them perhaps reluctantly to the ground. Now, the dried-out leaves crunch under my feet when I jog.

At least when there was snow, the bare branches were prettified with dollops of white and looked like the trees seen on forced-cheer holiday cards. Now, the snow has melted, and the shorn twigs look like the sunken cheeks of the dying elderly.

Winter is coming. It’s here.

I don’t mind the winter, I really don’t, as long as I don’t have to drive in snow and ice. That’s scary, especially since a bad accident in my teens broke off two front teeth. Otherwise, I was lucky.

Honestly, I prefer the cold of winter than the humidity summer. Ah, summer! I’ve always had a bit of a troubled, mixed-up relationship summer. I remember summers spent at the Jersey Shore, sitting at the beach, feeling the ocean breeze sway around me, gently brushing my skin; those airy wisps always seemed to tug the stress from my body and mind. How can you not be relaxed walking along the beach as the sun sets and the blue sky deepens?

And there's baseball. Need I say more? Actually, Tim McCarver said it best: You will never leave a ballpark in a worse mood than when you entered. I'm always amazed by people who say the game is too slow. But that's what we like about it! It's leisurely, unforced pace is its main attraction. You want frenetic? Watch a hockey game.

But summer always seemed too bold and brassy for me, too exhibitionist for my taste. Maybe that’s because I’ve never had a bikini body. Show off my legs? I think not. Oh, and did I mention the humidity? My body does not react well to humidity. It makes me tired and nauseous and cranky. I can’t breathe! Give me my AC!

There’s always a hurried undercurrent to summer, as if everyone is trying to stuff everything, every activity, every trip into three months. What about the other nine months?

So when the garish neon colors of summer slowly morph into the more subdued, mellow hues of autumn it’s as if nature is exhaling after a long exertion. It’s time for a change, time for cooler temperatures, a return to the calmer routine of school and work, of clothes that cover our bodies.

Fall is my favorite season. Yet there is a hint of loss, of an end, coming in the fall. Those fetching yellow and red leaves, once so green and supple, are to die even though we want them to stay gold. Nothing gold can stay…

Winter is coming. It’s here.

Whether a winter will be dodged-a-bullet bland or teeth-chattering severe depends on the caprice of the jet stream. Odd as this may sound, I'd prefer a cold, harsh, snowy winter — as the season is supposed to be. That way, when the tentative warmth finally arrives, as if by noblesse oblige, we can feel like we have earned the spring.

Meek or frigid, we know for sure there will more cold days than warm, days when we’ll spend hours digging out our sidewalks and cars, days when movement is restricted by ice and snow.

We can find comfort in that. A snowstorm can cocoon us in its white, light armor, shield us from harsh realities, as we stay (we hope) in warm homes, bundled in sweaters and fluffy robes, sipping hot cocoa (or red wine). Better not venture out, we might get hurt.

If I ruled the world (tis a pity I don’t), I would mandate that it only snow in December, so we can have the white Christmas and winters of our childhoods—real or imagined. I mean, snow in January is just so, so…existential. It has lost its meaning. It’s just a lumpy white annoyance with no holiday to make it remotely bearable. It's something to get through.

At least in February, we can start to count the days to when pitchers and catchers report, always a sure sign spring and warm temps are approaching. Even though early March may heave up some wet snowstorms, we can at least watch spring training games, where we can observe the amusing scene of major league pitchers — the most bubble-wrapped of all sporting gods — scurry to put on jackets while running the bases in frigid 86 degree weather.

Admittedly, spring can be a bit bipolar, and rather brief. It can be cold and rainy through April, and then suddenly turn hot and humid in May. Again, what's the hurry? Can't we have a normal spring instead of a quick dash into summer?

I like early March, though, only because it reminds me of late fall. Soon, the trees regain their green crowns. Summer is near and the cycle repeats itself.

I like living in a place where the change of seasons is pronounced. I would hate to live in a perpetually hot climate, like Florida.

Perhaps the reason I’m thinking about the change of seasons is because I know my life is changing, or has changed. My former 9-to-5-workday life is no longer a reality, a way of life that has drifted to the ground like dying autumn leaves.

What will replace it? What new life, fresh routine will take its place? Will it be a gentle homecoming, like the fall? The hectic newness of summer? A harsh crash like winter? A short sprint like spring? At this point, I cannot say. I don’t know.

Winter is coming. It’s here.

Go Back to the One Who Dumped You?

Sometimes things happen in the world that astound me. Endless wars, terrorist beheadings,

illness, hysteria over illness, political sniping that accomplishes nothing. And all we seem to care about is the ample, well-oiled rump of a dumb-cluck reality star. Has the entire universe gone bug-eyed crazy?

Things happen closer to home and my reality that make me shake my head in sheer bafflement as well. Like just yesterday I learned through the wonder that is social media (hey, it’s good for some things) that a woman I worked with at my former former company, who’d been laid off nine months before I was, has been hired again…by my former former company, the same one that — let me repeat — laid her off in 2009!

What the what? At times like these I hear the exasperated, plaintive whine of Tim McCarver: “What is going on here?” Has the entire world gone to Hades in a hand basket?

Since I’ve lost all contact with anyone who works at my former former company, I have no way of knowing what machinations went into this bewildering decision. Did she approach her former bosses, or did they approach her? Is my former former company, which has recently been sold, in solid enough financial shape to hire more staff? 

I do know that the laid-off/hired-again woman had fallen on hard times since her termination nearly five years ago. Was she that desperate for a job that she went back to the one who dumped her?

I truly wish her well, and hope my former former bosses treat her properly. She has a heart of gold. Now, I could say some rather unflattering things about her, but…

Oh, what the heck? No names here, right? It’s my blog and I’ll dish if I want to.

My overall impression of her, and I apologize in advance for my sexism here, is that she is, well, a bit of a ditz. She seemed more interested in coming into work and talking with her friends on the phone than in doing her job. She’s a party girl who has yet to realize that her particular party ended in 1983.

I also know that she slept with the sleazy drunk who oversaw the sales department at my former former company as well as another salesman, both married with young children. I know she clashed with the head of the company, a despicable, drunken bully — as most of us did at one time or another while under his nasty siege. She was none too happy the day she was laid off. I was there and overheard her wail to her former lover over her termination. He acted like she wasn’t there. He ignored her. Now, she wants to go back to that place? To work for that same guy? She deserves better than that.

Again, I like this lady. She was always nice to me and I to her. Her personal choices, however misguided, are just that — her personal choices. This is not to judge (too much), but to make an observation.

It also makes me wonder how well she will do in her “new” job, which is essentially the same as the “old” job she had before her layoff. The industry, the players, the entire landscape have shifted immensely in five years. Can she still do the job? A job she wasn’t all that great at five years prior? Has the employment market tightened so much that there wasn’t another, more qualified person to do that job?

I must point here that it's not unheard of that a company rehires a laid-off employee on a freelance or contract basis. Both my former former company and former company did just that. The company lessens the heavy burden (please note touch of sarcasm here) of having to pay that employee a full-time salary plus benefits, while at the same time retaining that person's knowledge and skills. It's pretty diabolical when you think about it.

Heck, even my former former workplace offered me a freelance assignment after my layoff. However, I think it was a one-time peace offering after I reported plagiarism by one of the esteemed (low paid ) editors they kept on staff over me. I also couldn't take it because I was just about to start the job at my former company. Which makes me think: Is this a full-time or contract position this lady is now taking? Of all the former staff members my former former company drop-kicked off a high ledge, they take back her? I can think of at lease half a dozen former co-workers (not including me) more deserving of a second chance than that airhead.

Then the more I thought about this situation, the more it makes perfect sense. It speaks to how personal and professional rejection warps our psyches and leads us into disastrous, incomprehensible decisions.

How many times after a lover has dumped us or a company has terminated us have we thought of only getting that person back, of getting our old job back. We’ve been tossed asunder, unmoored from the life we thought we had, our self-esteem ripped to shards of broken glass, never to be pieced together again. That is until we get that person/job back. “Oh, he/she will come back to me. He/she will realize what a mistake they made.”

Except…they don’t. And it’s good they don’t. That’s because our self-worth is not, or should never be, dependent on another person or a job. That person may leave you. Your company may dismiss you. What then? Does that mean you are a bad person? A bad worker?

Yet we scamper frantically after those shattered pieces of our self-esteem, collecting our sense of self, hoping to put them in our pocket, and with a tap, think, "Ah, it's all better now." Rather we should stand in place and watch those shiny bits undulate away with the capricious breeze. We cannot change what has happened. That part of our life is over. Better to move on and build anew.

Admittedly, I struggle with this on a daily basis. After too numerous-to-count personal and professional rejections, I sometimes feel I have no self-confidence left, that everything I do is horrible, I have no talent, everyone is better than me, that I’m ugly…okay, let’s stop there. Rejection can crush a soul.

Yet I instinctively know that pleading “take me back, please!” smacks of desperation that only reinforces the cruel narcissism of the person/company that dumped me. Getting that lover/job back will not heal the pain or make me whole again. That can only come from me. (On the other hand, believing no one could never not love us or that every piece of work we produce is perfect is another form of narcissism.)

Nevertheless, I can certainly understand why my former co-worker went back to the company that spurned her. She was sinking and grasped at the first rescue rope tossed into the water before her. Will it make her whole again? Will she get back to the life she once had, or hoped to have? I don’t know. She thinks she’s entering familiar territory but is she? So much has changed in five years…The business has changed and so has she.

Since I know the players in this rather bizarre re-coupling, I can make a few assumptions about why my former former bosses hired her back as well. It’s not because she was a great salesperson, although I can say with assurance she will not be sleeping (regularly) anymore with her former boss. She has moved to another state to take the job. The position is commission based, so I doubt they are paying her much in the way of a base salary. Always a concern for those cheap bastards.

No, I think they wanted someone they could control, somebody who wouldn’t question or challenge their ginned-up authority, somebody they could use as an easy whipping post. A happy-hour gal they could have drinks with and mistreat with nary a worry about her fighting back. Sounds too cruel to be true? You don’t know those men like I do. Never would those black hearts do anyone a kindness if it didn't benefit them first. At the very least, they are taking advantage of her desperation for a job. And can she ever be sure they won't terminate her job again?

Will this on/off-now-on-again business (personal?) relationship work? For her sake, and only for her sake, I hope it does. Unfortunately, a cursory reading of any pop psychology book on relationships affirms that on again/off-again pairings eventually fail. Oh, sure, the couple gets back together. But after the initial happiness, relief and stupendous makeup sex fades, the couple realizes the reasons for their breakup are still very much duking it out in the messy, overlapping he/she terrain of relationships, waiting to explode again at any minute, like a grenade whose pin has yet to be pulled.  

So if I had to venture a guess, I’m thinking this re-pairing will crater in about six months, after my former former bosses realize this woman cannot reach the impossible revenue goals they set for her. She couldn’t before, so why now? She, meanwhile, will realize she can’t handle the pressure (she couldn’t before), and acting the (aging) good-time girl is no guarantee of job security with those clowns. It wasn't before.

Soon the relationship will dissolve into a bitter game of blame, contempt and abuse. This will not end well.

As for me, I’d never go back to the one who dumped me. Never.

Carpets and Crossroads

It’s the first thing I notice when I go for a job interview (an increasingly rare occurrence lately). The carpet. The thin, industrial weave that covers the floors of nearly every office in the U.S.

It can be tan, light blue or dusky green. It always must be a neutral shade. Nothing too

exciting. Corporations want bland. Bland, bland, bland…

They all look the same whatever the color. All are stained with outside dirt and coffee spills. (Seriously, when was the last time the carpet was cleaned?)

There is something else, something more ominous that gives the carpet its beaten-down appearance. It seems caked over with the deadened career dreams of anyone who works there or has worked there. It’s as if the vapors from the chemicals concocted to make the proudly artificial mat have sucked out the souls of the people who work above it. I wonder how many workers have walked over those carpets as they are led away after a layoff.

Then, I notice the long lines of cubicles. Some have workers hunched over computers. Others are empty. Are they out to lunch, or was the person who once worked there laid off? There's an pervasive, palpable undercurrent of sadness, defeat. The carpet, the floors seem to sag under the weight of dashed hopes, of lives lived only for a paycheck, never questioning...and of corporate oppression. Having a full-time job provides the marshmallow security of a steady paycheck and employer-sponsored health insurance. But that passivity comes at a price—it can be snatched away at any moment.

Each time I step onto that carpet, the same thought swirls in the back of my mind: Do I really want to go back to this? Do I really want to again be a pawn of some Machiavellian managerial maneuvering that throws me out of a job with no warning? If working hard is no guarantee of job security, then, well, why bother?

You see, I’m at a crossroads. I’m not sure I want to take a full-time job again. Admittedly, no company has offered me full-time employment. So, the decision may be forced upon me. Will I ever be hired again? And if not, what will I do? How will I support myself? Which path do I take?

When I first started looking for a job back in January, I got numerous calls for interviews. So my optimism had some solid footing (please indulge me another carpet metaphor). As the months have passed by, as winter stretched into summer and now into late fall and still no job, I’m beginning to wonder if my quest for full-time employment is as much a fantasy as my dream of seeing Giancarlo Stanton in a New York Mets uniform. Was the job I fortunately was offered in 2011 and held for nearly three years a serendipitous happenstance, a momentary blip on my extended road to long-term joblessness?

I also wonder if I was too quick back in January to revamp my resume and immediately get back on the job-hunting trail. To be fair to myself, there were financial imperatives behind that choice. I jumped right into freelancing as well. I don't regret that. It allowed me to do something I love and gave me a chance to evaluate whether it could be a career path. It also earned me extra cash.

Yet perhaps I should have stepped back and taken the time to really think about what I truly wanted to do. Part-time work combined with freelancing? A new career? Should I have gone to the unemployment office for career counseling? Because right now, the path I'm on clearly is leading nowhere.

Most important, should I have realized I was never going to get hired again at my age? Did keeping busy blind me to the reality of my situation? Could it ever compensate for my shame over two layoffs in four years? Why was I so hellbent on speeding back to my old life that I ignored the possibility of building a new one?

Yet as I said, I got interviews, so I had hope. But that hope is rapidly fading, like the worn carpet in so many offices.

Do Laid-Off, Long-Term Unemployed People Have Free Will?

I went for a job interview on Thursday. If hired (a pretty big if), it would mean an hour-long

commute by car on one of the state’s busiest roads, and one that is in a perpetual state of repair. So during rush hour, one could expect numerous lane closures and quick maneuvers to dodge traffic cones and barriers. That hour could easily turn into two.

It would further mean learning a whole new industry. That doesn’t bother me as much as the message I got from the managers who interviewed me: I would have to learn the new industry quickly—without much, if any, assistance from management. Oh, what fun! I went down that road (figuratively) at my last job. I managed to do a competent job—despite a notable lack of support—made only a few minor mistakes, and got laid off anyway.

So, you can understand why I would have some reservations about this job. Yet there is a nagging voice in my head (among many) that says, You cannot refuse any job. You are a long-term unemployed worker. You have no free will.

I’m sure you, dear reader, are thinking the same thing. How can someone who is out of work for nearly a year refuse any work?

Any time I think about this question, I can see the wagging finger of judgment pointed at me. I saw it in the stern look a friend (employed) gave me when I mentioned the long commute for this possible job. How dare she not take a job, any job? She’s unemployed! She has no right!

Let’s get something straight: First, I might not get offered the job (a distinct possibility in light of my increasingly rejection-stained job search). Second, I’m a human being and I have free will.

Yes, that’s right. I do have the right to make decisions about where I chose to work or live. It’s easy for someone on the outside to tell a job seeker that he or she must take any job offered or relocate to another area to gain employment. In essence, to insist they give up their basic human right to have a free will.

Not that I haven’t considered the possibility of relocating. I interviewed at one job 90 minutes away along the Jersey Shore. For that job, I would have moved to that area closer to the ocean. (Don’t judge the region by that TV trash fest Jersey Shore. It’s really quite lovely.) Alas, the job was not offered to me.

This most recent job is in an area of the state I have no desire to relocate to. Don’t I have the right to decide where I want to live? What if I simply like, at this point in my life, where I’m living? Just because I was laid off does not mean I have to give up my freedom to choose.

Now, when I was collecting unemployment benefits—well, that was a different story. Every week I was asked if I turned down any viable job offers. (I didn’t. I never received any.) If I had spurned a job offer, I would have lost my benefits for two weeks. So, yeah, during that particular period, I had no free will. Understandably, I have to agree. If you are getting government money while unemployed, you are pretty much obligated to take any job offer that comes your way.

Those benefits ended in August, however. Therefore, in theory, I’m free to appraise any potential job in the context of whether I would be comfortable and successful there; does it match my previous experience; how much I would be paid (I cannot take another salary cut!), and yes, even the commuting distance as well as the ease of that commute.

Or say it's obvious during the interview that my prospective boss is a raging lunatic (been there, done that). Or that the company hasn't a clue what it wants from an incoming employee. Don't I have the right to say thanks, but no thanks? At the very least don't I have the option of evaluating any possible job opportunity and simply expressing any concerns about it? Apparently not. I have no free will.

Don't I have the freedom as well of exploring other work options, such as freelancing? Though I have to say the verdict so far is not too promising. Freelance jobs are out there, but the pay is low—if paid at all! I'm still waiting to get a check from work I did during the summer.

How different my situation would be perceived if I had simply left my job—of my own free will—without another job to slide into immediately. That’s because if someone quits a job, tells the corporate grind to shove it, to find another path in life more aligned with his or her true calling (cue the Enya music), that person is perceived as a risk taker, a rebel, somebody to be celebrated. Our society commends such actions. In reality, their grand scheme may crash and burn into bitter regret or even bankruptcy, yet no one admonishes them for what may have been a poor decision.

Never would I criticize a person for exercising their free will and pursuing a better way of life. That is their right.

Laid-off, unemployed people are given no such approbation. Instead, we are treated like dopes who sacrificed ourselves to the corporate gods and got our just desserts by getting laid off. We were company drones, not risk takers. We are to be disparaged, not applauded. Many HR departments won’t even consider our resumes.

There is some truth in those views. We probably were too trusting of our bosses, and should have scurried out sooner when the signs of imminent layoffs became apparent and the workplace turned into Lord of the Flies. Yet none of us kicked-to-the-curb workers should ever feel bad about doing honest work to earn a paycheck so we could have a roof over our head and food on the table. We may have been misguided in our loyalty, but we are not bad people. We were simply unlucky.

Now, if I don’t get that job or—horrors!—decline an offer (which will probably not be made), I may regret that decision. But that’s what free will is all about: We get to make decisions about how we live our lives, treat other people, where we work or live. The rub is we must also accept the consequences of those decisions—good or bad.

I also think it’s a bit unfair—and cruel—to deny a laid-off worker’s free will. Did we have any free will when we were told our job was eliminated? Were we given any choice in that matter?

Back to my original question: Do laid-off, long-term unemployed workers have free will? My answer is no. As of now, I feel like my free will is being dictated by my savings account, which I have dipped into repeatedly to pay for necessities. Much further depletions and I could end up homeless. So if I do get that job offer, I probably will take it.

What other choice do I have?