When was the last time I collected unemployment? It was September-October of 1992. I had spent the previous 2 months temping as a proofreader at the mighty giant law firm Skadden Arps, and the proofreading supervisor, David Hill, offered me a permanent job at Skadden, which I accepted. However, David explained, it might take a little while for the details of the job to be worked out, so I might need to wait for several weeks before I would be officially hired, but I shouldn't worry, because it was a definite thing.
Well, I did wait, but in the meantime, I needed to get some other temping work, but all my agencies who got me work had forgotten about me since I had been on a long-term assignment, and I would have to work my way back up their lists. In other words, it would take a while to start getting jobs again. So filing for unemployment was the answer.
I know some folks who would rather poke themselves in the eye with a pencil than file for unemployment. It just doesn't fit with their definition of a responsible adult human being to lean on someone else, especially the government, when they are unable to put bread on their table. But I have never felt that way. I don't think there is something noble in not accepting help when someone offers it to you. Rather, I think it's mostly stupidity that would make a drowning man say, "no thanks, friend, I will pass up the branch you're offering me, and keep flailing about!"
I've got nothing against flailing. But I also have nothing against asking for help when I need it. I think it is a sign of maturity to put myself in the hands of others when it is appropriate and necessary, and my experiences in doing so have been vastly positive. But I belabor the point.
So for those few weeks, I participated in the unemployment plan that existed in New York City at the time. As a temp, I was considered an independent contractor, which means that each week I reported how many days I had worked, and for any week that I worked less than four days, I was paid a certain amount per day (I think it was the enormous sum of $80). So if I worked no days, I got $320, and if I worked 4 days, I got nothing. It wasn't enough to make me rich - I'm sure I spent every penny I got, between rent and food and transportation - but it kept me from getting destitute again.
Yes, I had been destitute not long before. You see, in early 1992 I graduated from graduate school at Columbia University, and I spent most of the year clawing my way back from destitution. I temped, I borrowed money, I sold books and records to the Strand and Academy Records. So at the end of the year, with the finish line of a regular paycheck well within my sights, the last thing I wanted to do was accumulate new debts. Unemployment saved my ass, and after about 8 weeks I was hired at Skadden and went off the dole.
Now here I am in 2011, after 18 years of milking the cash cow of legal support work at a total of 5 different law firms. I have decided to turn my back on law firms, and try to do something a little closer to my heart - admin work for music and other performing arts organizations. Maybe even start my own music business. But the phone so far ain't ringing off the hook, and the door ain't falling in with all the folks knocking on it. I'm developing opportunities, but it's a process less akin to digital photography, and more like what Matthew Brady must have done when he took his early photographs using glass panels and cameras that weighed as much as a healthy cows.
Yes, it might take a while. Not that I'm discouraged. I'm entering a new industry at a time of great national and international financial distress. But here comes unemployment to bridge the gap and keep me from the windowsills with other folks who are feeling more than a tiny bit desperate. And I'm thankful for it. I'll take it, and squeeze the money they give me until I get every last drop of sustenance from it. And when I'm back on my feet again in the near future, I will wax nostalgic for the time when I struggled, but didn't give in to discouragement and despair.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Monday, February 7, 2011
A weekend of opposites
What a great weekend I've just had, but a weekend composed of two days with lots of opposites. Saturday, with family. Sunday, with friends. Saturday, formal. Sunday, casual. Saturday, artistic and cultural. Sunday, low-brow and entertaining. Saturday, girly things. Sunday, guy things. Saturday wine, Sunday beer. And so on and so on. To the details:
Saturday, my sister came to NYC and we went out to dinner and an opera with her as a late birthday present.
Sunday, I went to Brooklyn to the Brooklyn Cigar Lounge, got a hero sandwich on the way, and ate and drank and watched the Super Bowl with lots of my guy friends.
Several months ago, around the time of sister's birthday, Therese and I decided we wanted to take her to an opera. We started looking at the schedule at the Metropolitan Opera, thinking it would be great to go to an opera taking place close to my sister's actual birthday. But when we thought more about availability and something we would like to see, we settled on "Nixon in China" by modern composer John Adams, which was playing in February. So we moved the birthday celebration to a few months later, which didn't bother my sister. She likes to come into New York periodically - she doesn't live far away, just in Avenel, NJ - and there's nothing to chase the winter blahs away like a festive visit to the big city!
Now, previous times when I had met my sister in the Lincoln Center area to attend opera performances and such, we had gone to dinner at Pomodoro Rosso, a great Italian restaurant on Columbus Avenue and 70th Street. In thinking about where to have dinner before the opera this time, when Therese and I were out for a walk on Columbus Avenue one day, I pointed at Pomodoro and said, "that's where we've gone in the past." And it turned out that Pomodoro is a sister restaurant to one Therese has been to in Naples, Italy! So there was no question, but that we would go there again on Saturday.
Saturday was another wet chilly day, so I asked my sister to come in early so we would have plenty of time to have dinner and not feel rushed to get to the opera on time. I was a little worried that we would have too much time. But it all worked out perfectly. We took a taxi from Penn Station to the restaurant, got a table right away, shared a bottle of white wine while we ordered and had our appetizers and entrees, all had really yummy meals, walked from the restaurant to the opera house with a few minutes to spare to get to our seats before the chandeliers started rising to signify the beginning of the evening's performance.
We all enjoyed the opera very much. "Nixon in China" has some unexpected humor in it, and otherwise is full of very listenable music. The melodic lines of the voices are stylized, and just like Baroque recitative, there are lots of phrases that end with the same melodic progressions or cadences. But the music is plenty expressive, and even commonplace textual phrases came across making perfect sense. And the orchestra and all the singers sounded wonderful.
Afterward, we put my sister in a car service so she could ride home in comfort, free of the train schedules to New Jersey. What a perfect evening it was!
Sunday began with me baking my famous cookies at home, which was to be my contribution to the pot-luck we were having at the cigar lounge. I arrived at the lounge in time to be involved in a live feed that my friend Kevin aka Senor Cigar was doing. After being interviewed on camera, I went to a deli to pick up provisions for the evening: a roast beef hero, a bottle of Chimay Blue Belgian ale and a Coke Zero.
By the time the game began, the crowd in the lounge had filled out a bit. Some people I haven't seen in quite a while were there, like Marc Kelly and Stephanie Balmir. Marc is a filmmaker who travels quite a bit for his jobs - music videos, television and films - and Stephanie is a clothing designer who also travels quite a bit. I had given her some tips on good cigar spots in Miami during the summer, to help her for a trip she was to make there. Apparently, my tips worked out well for her. Keon and Smalls and some of the other regular guys were also there.
David, the owner of the lounge, was rooting for the Green Bay Packers in the Super Bowl, which threw me, because I was sort of rooting for the Pittsburgh Steelers. And sure enough, the Packers got out to a big lead, so David had a lot of cheer about, while I was feeling a little anxious with my team doing so poorly! But it wasn't such a big deal - overall I was having a good time.
The commercials for the Super Bowl were once again something of a disappointment. Some were cool, some were head-scratchers, and some seemed too gay to the guys at the lounge - like the Doritos commercial where one guy licked another's finger. I just thought they were mostly stupid. I liked the Audi commercial where the two elderly men broke out of jail.
When the game was over and the Packers had won, most people were pretty happy. I handed out some of my cookies during the course of the game, but the real star dessert-wise was the red velvet cupcakes made by Kevin's wife Belinda and Jonelle, one of the hostesses at the cigar lounge. Belinda's cupcakes won the prize, I think, for the best cupcakes. By then I was drinking my Chimay and smoking a Padilla Cazadores, so I was very happy. A bunch of people came after the game had ended - I think there were some late-night escapades in the works - but I didn't stick around, taking a car service home before midnight.
A wonderful weekend. But I look forward to next weekend being a little quieter.
Saturday, my sister came to NYC and we went out to dinner and an opera with her as a late birthday present.
Sunday, I went to Brooklyn to the Brooklyn Cigar Lounge, got a hero sandwich on the way, and ate and drank and watched the Super Bowl with lots of my guy friends.
Several months ago, around the time of sister's birthday, Therese and I decided we wanted to take her to an opera. We started looking at the schedule at the Metropolitan Opera, thinking it would be great to go to an opera taking place close to my sister's actual birthday. But when we thought more about availability and something we would like to see, we settled on "Nixon in China" by modern composer John Adams, which was playing in February. So we moved the birthday celebration to a few months later, which didn't bother my sister. She likes to come into New York periodically - she doesn't live far away, just in Avenel, NJ - and there's nothing to chase the winter blahs away like a festive visit to the big city!
Now, previous times when I had met my sister in the Lincoln Center area to attend opera performances and such, we had gone to dinner at Pomodoro Rosso, a great Italian restaurant on Columbus Avenue and 70th Street. In thinking about where to have dinner before the opera this time, when Therese and I were out for a walk on Columbus Avenue one day, I pointed at Pomodoro and said, "that's where we've gone in the past." And it turned out that Pomodoro is a sister restaurant to one Therese has been to in Naples, Italy! So there was no question, but that we would go there again on Saturday.
Saturday was another wet chilly day, so I asked my sister to come in early so we would have plenty of time to have dinner and not feel rushed to get to the opera on time. I was a little worried that we would have too much time. But it all worked out perfectly. We took a taxi from Penn Station to the restaurant, got a table right away, shared a bottle of white wine while we ordered and had our appetizers and entrees, all had really yummy meals, walked from the restaurant to the opera house with a few minutes to spare to get to our seats before the chandeliers started rising to signify the beginning of the evening's performance.
We all enjoyed the opera very much. "Nixon in China" has some unexpected humor in it, and otherwise is full of very listenable music. The melodic lines of the voices are stylized, and just like Baroque recitative, there are lots of phrases that end with the same melodic progressions or cadences. But the music is plenty expressive, and even commonplace textual phrases came across making perfect sense. And the orchestra and all the singers sounded wonderful.
Afterward, we put my sister in a car service so she could ride home in comfort, free of the train schedules to New Jersey. What a perfect evening it was!
Sunday began with me baking my famous cookies at home, which was to be my contribution to the pot-luck we were having at the cigar lounge. I arrived at the lounge in time to be involved in a live feed that my friend Kevin aka Senor Cigar was doing. After being interviewed on camera, I went to a deli to pick up provisions for the evening: a roast beef hero, a bottle of Chimay Blue Belgian ale and a Coke Zero.
By the time the game began, the crowd in the lounge had filled out a bit. Some people I haven't seen in quite a while were there, like Marc Kelly and Stephanie Balmir. Marc is a filmmaker who travels quite a bit for his jobs - music videos, television and films - and Stephanie is a clothing designer who also travels quite a bit. I had given her some tips on good cigar spots in Miami during the summer, to help her for a trip she was to make there. Apparently, my tips worked out well for her. Keon and Smalls and some of the other regular guys were also there.
David, the owner of the lounge, was rooting for the Green Bay Packers in the Super Bowl, which threw me, because I was sort of rooting for the Pittsburgh Steelers. And sure enough, the Packers got out to a big lead, so David had a lot of cheer about, while I was feeling a little anxious with my team doing so poorly! But it wasn't such a big deal - overall I was having a good time.
The commercials for the Super Bowl were once again something of a disappointment. Some were cool, some were head-scratchers, and some seemed too gay to the guys at the lounge - like the Doritos commercial where one guy licked another's finger. I just thought they were mostly stupid. I liked the Audi commercial where the two elderly men broke out of jail.
When the game was over and the Packers had won, most people were pretty happy. I handed out some of my cookies during the course of the game, but the real star dessert-wise was the red velvet cupcakes made by Kevin's wife Belinda and Jonelle, one of the hostesses at the cigar lounge. Belinda's cupcakes won the prize, I think, for the best cupcakes. By then I was drinking my Chimay and smoking a Padilla Cazadores, so I was very happy. A bunch of people came after the game had ended - I think there were some late-night escapades in the works - but I didn't stick around, taking a car service home before midnight.
A wonderful weekend. But I look forward to next weekend being a little quieter.
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