Things I Love About Memphis: Confederate Carriages

So today we're taking a break from this whole unemployment business. I mean there are only so many exciting things I can tell you guys about my life knocking on doors and making phone calls and sending e-mails. There are only so many inexpert opinions I can come up with, only so much entertaining drivel that I have inside of me. I'm only one man, ok? Stop expecting so much--I mean I am unemployed after all.

But luckily when all your creative energies are tapped and your exhausted from all those rejections, the good city of Memphis is there to console you, to pull you into her big, soft arms and hold your head against her chest and tell you everything is going to be alright--like some Stay-Puft version of Aunt Jemima. It sounds a little weird, but it's true. If I ever had to pick something to personify Memphis, I would pick a giant-sized version of Aunt Jemima. Maybe this is outlandish, but still right as I was beginning to get fed up with this city and it's reluctance for hiring college graduates, I saw this coming home one night and my faith and love for the city was completely restored. What follows has not been doctored or edited in any way, but the quality isn't great so look closely:

Now, just in case you can't see the video too well, let me give you a still shot that's blurry, but should give you an idea of just what exactly is going on here:

Do not attempt to adjust your computer. Yes, that is a rotund man with porkchops and a beard wearing a Confederate battle flag shirt driving a white carriage with colored lights down Third Street. Where else in the world could you see this but in Memphis? Also, let me remind you that this happened on the weekend of the Jackson v. Tennessee State football game, two colleges that have a majority of African-American students and who absolutely pack Beale St out every year after the game. Where was this guy coming from? Beale St, after the game. There are a lot of things I could say about this, but I think the first thing that comes to my mind is: How is this ok? This guy is driving a carriage down the road WEARING a Confederate flag during one of the weekends with the highest African-American traffic. Now, I don't think this guy meant anything by his shirt. I mean if you could see him a little bit better you would know that there is no malice in this man. He looks like a young Confederate Santa Claus, not a KKK member. He's just so proud to have southern blood in his veins that he has no other recourse, but to wear his pride. At least, this is my speculation. You decide for yourselves what you think of my Confederate Santa. All I know is that as odd and contradictory as it all might be, he lifted my unemployed spirits and gave me a little inspiration. Who knows, if this goes on much longer I may be out there wearing a Confederate flag and driving a carriage. So, here's to you Confederate Flag Wearing Carriage Driver--Here's to you.

Adventures in Unemployment: Day 3

Day 3: Hitting the Pavement

That’s right, friends. I got out of the apartment today and pounded the pavement like a Mormon who was taking a half-day, or who had a lunch date, or something. That is to say, I went in a couple of places I’m interested in working and dropped off resumes. Let’s see if this saying no to a face theory really holds water. I mean, I at least know for certain that these people have looked at my resume. I saw them do it. I even saw one lady put it in a mailbox for one of the executives that work there. These have to be good things. Unfortunately both places I went, the people I really needed to talk to were out, but I thinking getting out there was the most important part of the day. It was a timid foray into the unknown, a bashful introduction into the hard, cold world of pavement pounding, but it wasn’t too bad. Much less intimidating than I thought.

The cool thing about actually getting out and going places is that you feel way more productive than you do just e-mailing resumes around. I actually feel like I did something today, which is not a common feeling you have as an unemployed person. Unless you feel like you accomplished something very mundane, like organized your rubber stamp collection, or color-coded your closet. (No, I’ve never done those things, but they were the most mundane things that I could think of, so chill out).

The other thing that is great about getting out in the real world is that you have real world interactions with people, and people are weird. For instance, one of the places I went today was a huge law firm in downtown Memphis. As I got on the elevator to go up the thirty some-odd stories to the firm’s offices, a whimsical middle-aged balding man who happened to be going to the same floor joined me on the elevator. We greeted each other as he got on and then began our long vertical trek together. Now, after about 5 or 6 floors had passed no further conversation had been conceived between us, and I thought it was safe to assume that we would weather this journey together silently. I was totally fine with this. I’m not a huge elevator conversation guy. I mean who has time to get to know someone on an elevator? If I can get to know you in the thirty seconds it takes to get to where we’re going, chances are I don’t want to get to know you. I don’t say this to be mean; I’d just rather sit down and have a cup of coffee with someone, alright? Alright. In any case, as we near the halfway point in our expedition, the whimsical bald man starts talking to me. But it’s not that he just starts talking to me. He starts talking to me like we’ve been talking the entire time we’re on the elevator.

He looks over at me with his gleeful little eyes and says, “You know, I like to read philosophy sometimes because it intimidates people.” This is verbatim. Honestly, who starts a conversation this way? Though I was thrown off, I answered immediately, “Oh, really?” Because whatever was going to come out of my little elevator hobbit next had to be interesting. “Yes,” he answered, “In fact, I was just reading Jean-Paul Sartre’s indictment of Freud and it’s very good.” Then several things happened quickly: The elevator doors opened. He stepped out first. And then, he disappeared in a flash around the corner without another word. In case you missed that, let me recap what happened quickly. I was on an elevator with a man who didn’t speak for half of the ride, and then we he did speak to me, he immediately brought up Jean-Paul Sartre and Sigmund Freud. And then as soon as he appeared, he was gone. Who does that? But far from being annoyed by this guy, I’m actually a big fan of his. Every time I think about what happened I can’t help but smile. I mean how often does that happen? This guy must be the elevator king of the building. I can only wish that we had a couple more floors to talk about Sartre and Freud, who knows what revelations would have been made.

Even if all this pavement pounding isn’t what ends up getting me a job, at least it’s better than sitting around the apartment with my roommates and commenting on the same Facebook album. That gets old. Maybe instead I’ll start reading more philosophy, so I’ll have something to talk about on elevators.

(P.S. if you want a more in-depth study of elevator exploits check out This Guy Being Clever)

Adventures in Unemployment: Day 2

Day # 2: The Job of the Unemployed

It’s amazing the things you find to do when you’re unemployed. Yes, it’s true that job searching should be your full time job when you don’t have one. But, let’s be honest how often do you employed people slack off at your jobs? Be honest now. We’ll all see you on Facebook. So the truth is unemployed people do the same thing—we take breaks, but instead of doing semi-constructive things like checking our e-mail or updating our twitter (and since doing those things is part of what our job as unemployed people entails), we find other—more interesting—things to do.

For instance, yesterday my roommate [Brick]—who is more underemployed than actually unemployed—decided to see how long he could go without changing out of what he slept in the night before. Turns out he can go all day. He even took the trash out in his boxers.

I’ve tried similar forms of entertainment ranging from trying to construct a workout plan that involves no dumbbells or barbells and can be done from the confines of my room to researching any random question that comes up during the day. Today’s questions included: How much of “Almost Famous” is actually based on Cameron Crowe? (A lot it turns out) What’s the highest scoring word in Scrabble? (Oxyphenbutazone) Who is Jim Whitaker? (First American to climb Mt. Everest) How many air miles is it from Memphis to Tampa Bay? (approximately 668). This is a very small sampling of all the questions we confront during a single day. While it’s interesting and will undoubtedly makes us real contenders on Jeopardy one day, it gets old after a while.

Another factor that compounds all of these things is that as an unemployed person you tend to stay up later. I think this is mostly because you feel like you did nothing during the day and thus you have the energy to continue doing nothing for even longer. This is when things really get odd. This is how you end up watching “Cold Mountain” or “The Notebook” with your roommate at 3 AM and falling asleep together on the futon (Not that this has ever actually happened—cough).

In short, I think being unemployed is a mental state, one that you have to fight to get out of. You have to wake up every morning and be conscious of doing something productive. If I understand the work world correctly (which I probably don’t) it seems like the exact opposite of the unemployment world. When you go to work, you wake up in a dazed state shower, shave, and get dressed, then you drive to work where you may or may not be conscious of actually doing something productive. Instead what you are conscious of while you’re at work is the fact that you are slacking off. You are keenly aware of the fact that you’re on Facebook because you know that you aren’t supposed to be, and you derive enjoyment out of reading blogs or tweeting or doing whatever you do while you’re at work that isn’t work related. That excel sheet that took you 20 minutes to fill out and email to your boss was just a blip on the radar screen, but that comment you left on Jimmy’s photo—now, that was a good time. For the unemployed all of those things are still enjoyable, but they become completely overshadowed by hearing back from a potential employer or finding a cool job, or writing a great cover letter.

It’s a fight to be productive, so that hopefully--one day--someone can pay me to find ways of being unproductive. Don’t you love America?

Now of course this isn’t always true, I know I will love and work hard at whatever job I do eventually find, but that doesn’t mean I won’t sneak a game of Facebook Scrabble in like the rest of you.

In fact, it turns out I might even have a prospect or two after some of this effort I’ve put forth. A local paper contacted me today and might give me a shot at some freelance stuff around town (and by stuff I mean covering the minutes of government meetings in Germantown and Collierville—compelling stuff). But regardless, it seems like the job of the unemployed is really about the effort. Not getting yourself too stressed out over every unanswered Monster.com Job you apply to, enjoying the freedom to play zombie-killing video games for a couple of hours, but mostly having the stick-to-itiveness to put yourself out there everyday, so that hopefully somebody, somewhere will take notice.

Adventures in Unemployment: Day 1

So, I have been on hiatus for a while between gallivanting across the country and getting settled back into life here in Memphis. But now comes perhaps the most important series of posts in the history of blogging—or at least in my history of blogging, which isn’t very long. I am going to begin blogging my way through unemployment. It’s been a solid 4 months now since I graduated college and while some of that time was filled with trips and odd jobs and just taking a break in general, I remain unemployed. Hopefully this series won’t be too long because I can’t afford for it to be, but in any case, welcome to my world—the thoughts, the observations, and the interesting stage of life that is unemployment.

Day #1: Networking.

So, people always tell you that networking is the way to go—that’s how you get jobs. You’ve got to know somebody somewhere who knows somebody else who has an uncle whose best friend who works for Human Resources at FedEx or Starbucks or whatever company you want to work for. In fact, my alma mater (which is a great school, even though I’m about to make it sound ridiculous) used to put out these little leaflets around school that said something to the effect of: “Networking, one letter away from Not-working.”

While this is incredibly cheesy, it is also completely untrue. I mean I know a few people, a very few, who got jobs in sort of a passive way through their parents or whatever. Sure, that kind of networking is one letter away from “not-working,” but for the rest of us networking is just working without the net (My school totally should have hired me for that campaign instead). You have to be willing to put yourself out there to meet people several times over before you actually get to anything really concrete. But the crazy thing is—it works. I would say at least 95% of my friends that graduated that actually do have jobs now got them through someone they knew or met somewhere. It’s amazing how high school comes back to you after college. It’s all about whom you know and how they feel about you. But regardless all of that is still

Maybe it’s also “not-working” for people who already have a lot of contacts, who spent their college career going to job fairs and “networking nights,” or who have well connected parents or family friends. But what about the people who, like me, move to a city after graduation simply because they like it, or because they have friends there, but have no real contacts? I think this would have been much less of a problem if the economy was better, but I’m not sure. This is the only job market I’ve ever known, and so far it sucks. Here are of couple things I’ve learned about networking without a network so far in my job search:

1. Don’t use the Internet for anything, ever. This may sound extreme, but it’s kind of true. I’ve applied for countless jobs online since I’ve been in Memphis, but I’ve only heard back from three. The first one I heard back from resulted in the preceding post, “The Interview Story.” The second one emailed me back to tell me the position had been filled, and the third told me that I didn’t have the right credentials for the position I applied for. Sending applications out via the Internet is just about as likely to get you a job as going up on your roof, making paper airplanes out of your resume, and chucking them off. While there is definitely a chance something really great could happen to your resume out there on the wind, the most likely possibility is that it will end up floating upside-down in a gutter somewhere.

2. I’m not mad at the Internet. Sure I could go on complaining about how ridiculous some of the things I’ve applied for are, and how there are so many jobs I should have heard back from, but I think there’s a reason the internet is not the place to look for jobs. It’s too easy. What kind of weird world would we live in if all you had to do was click a submit button on a job search website and (poof!) you had a job? It’s way too easy. There’s still a very human element to the whole hiring process, and the Internet, at times, makes it nigh impossible to display that humanity to a potential employer. I think critics who talk about how technology is ruining our society should try being unemployed for a while. In a job search, technology actually helps you strengthen the social bonds you need to start building a network. Yeah, it’s great for letting you know what’s available out there too, but the ability it gives you to communicate with mass amounts of people quickly is what is really invaluable. Today it allowed me to contact a friend in Seattle who might know someone in Memphis who could get me a job. This is a great thing and a terrible thing, because just as quickly as you can contact people they can throw your email away and never see it again.

3. It’s all about the face to face. This is not a surprise to anyone who has ever gotten a job probably, but something I’ve decided on doing from now on in my job search is actually visiting the offices of the places I want to work. Not only does it show initiative on your part, but it puts a face with the name, and it’s so much harder to not respond to someone when they’re standing right in front of you. The downside of this is, of course, that it’s kind of awkward. I can already imagine a lot of weight shifting, stuttering, and sweaty-palmedness on my part. I haven’t actually tried this yet, but expect a post on my first tenuous foray into the world of face to face job searching. Regardless though, I feel like this is the way to go. There is something about being there that all the best cover letters in the world can’t make up for.

4. The longer you go without a job, the harder it is. A great truth of the world is: the more time each day you spend in your underwear, the less likely you are to actually do something positive. Sometimes I feel like the member of a bad sitcom in my apartment. I’m the one that’s always around in various stages of unkemptness—think Owen Wilson in “You, Me, and Dupree.” This goes back to the whole the internet is too easy thing. Any job you can apply for and get in your underwear should not be a real job, and probably isn’t (take that Google Ad sellers). So lately my goal has been to get out of bed at a time when most normal people get out of bed and to eat breakfast and take a shower at a reasonable interval of time after that. It sounds kind of simple, but you would be amazed how much less likely you are to sit around and watch movies or look at Facebook when you’re actually showered and ready for the day.

These are all the things I’m learning as an unemployed person. It’s a much different and more frightening education than any I ever received in college (this may also have to do with the fact that I was an English major). I know there is a job out there for me somewhere, and I am determined to find it, but for now all I can do is try to find leads, to build connections and from that hopefully find something real, where I can use my talents for good and not evil. So, as I send this out into the cosmic void of internet readership, let me just say that if anybody has any ideas for me, I’d love to hear them and even if you don’t have ideas but you know people, I would love to meet them. Until tomorrow, friends.

UPDATE for Day 1:

This is why I hate the Internet. I was directed to this site after filling out an application to be a trailer unloader--I got the posting off of the Memphis Flyer and thought I would apply just out of curiosity. I had no idea I was in for a VIP ticket: http://www.teleprofitsnow.com/moms/success.aspx?call=9/8/2009%208:00:00%20PM