Memoirs of an Unemployed Man, Part 1: The Legend of Gainful Employment

Being unemployed is old hat for me. I've been lucky enough to find a way to stay "successfully unemployed" for long stretches in my life. When I was a kid, my mom didn't really make me work, and she was generous when I graduated college, and drifted from job to job aimlessly, with sizable gaps in between. When I first came out to LA, I did a lot of short-time work which paid nice chunks -- focus groups, PA work, helping people move, etc. And though I haven't had a ton of success in screenwriting, it has allowed me two long stretches of leisure in recent years.

But what I am not used to is being involuntarily unemployed, as I am now. I've been looking for a job, but unable to land one, which has never been a problem before. Of course, I'm not alone. There are lots of folks out there who are job-searching right now -- many much more desperately than myself. I'm lucky enough to have had some money still squirreled away from the script sale, and my wife just got a promotion/raise/office, so I'm not going to begging you for spare change outside the 7-11 anytime soon. But in these troubled economic times, I can't wait until the very last moment to get a job, so I'm out pounding the pavement internet looking for work.

This has led me to find out a few, very alarming things, chiefly that a huge portion of the ad listings fall into two categories: spammers and scammers. The spammers are just trying to get you to go to their site, fill out their survey, or join their site. The scammers are a whole different breed of scum. They run all manner of fake listings in an attempt to squeeze a few dollars out of you before you realize there is no money coming back. Many offer you a great income from the comfort of your home, or in your spare time -- always a red flag. Some ask for a small upfront fee, others offer pyramid schemes dressed up as corporations. One actually sends you checks which you can cash before you have to send out a percentage of it from your account -- only later do you find out the check bounced and you're out the money.*

After you steer through all that crap, you find the few actual jobs out there to find the pickings pretty slim. Many aren't worth applying for, and the best ones are flooded with so many it's hard to get through. But recently I did have a couple of interviews, which led to one short-lived, but very eventful job. It was a bad match, but a good story: The Ballad of Crazy Flower Lady. I've been wanting to write about it, and urged to by others, but I'm afraid it might end up being a novel. Only one way to find out, so I might as well give it a shot. Look for it in Part 2, coming tomorrow soon whenever I damn well please.

* I think in this way, one could argue, the internet has made the job market a worse place. Yes, there are advantages -- speed being chief among them -- but what was so wrong about searching the want ads in the paper? At least they were real. Mostly. I did run into a couple of pyramid schemes in my day, but nothing like there is now.