Notes from the Unemployment Line

“Chastity,” 27, is now making some headway toward getting out of the porn biz—which pays well but last week was causing her to question a lot of things.

Two weeks ago, after I saw Eli’s post about the US Census Bureau hiring workers in Seattle, I called them up to take their qualifying exam. I wandered down to the local public library to re-enact my high school SAT experience—this time with #2 pencils stamped with US CENSUS 2010.

My score? 100%.

Hell yes! Validation of my intellectual abilities feels so good, but I still might end up living in a cardboard box under I-5.

While I wait to find out whether 100% equals a new job, Sophia’s question from last week about employment suitability—i.e., for jobs at Wal-Mart or 7-Eleven—is striking a real chord. I’ve done my share of menial jobs, but always part-time, and don’t mind the work. The real issue for me is the day job: maybe I’ve been scarred by the Microsoft contractor mill, but I never expected the corporate world to be so crushingly dull. I was stunned when my last manager told me that I learned the full scope of the job in six weeks, where it took the previous contractor four months.

Both my father and my step-father (neither of whom went to college) have worked their lives in blue-collar jobs making less than $60k annually. As I have drifted through the post college Odyssey Years—discovering corporate boredom so profound that at one point I listened to the entire ten year corpus of This American Life before moving on to French tapes—both male parents tried to disabuse me of my premature expectations for money, responsibility, or, correspondingly, mental stimulation. I had to earn my seniority—gradually. Suck it up, they told me, work is called work for a reason.

Short of returning to graduate school, I don’t quite believe that I’ll find a job that uses my full brainpower. I don’t know that I can stomach another job where I’m so bored and unhappy that I burst into tears in my car before work. Still, with so many other people competing for jobs, the onus is on me to ensure my own job satisfaction.

Over the last six (!) months, freed from the corporate workday, my primary instinct has been to write. I write about arts and culture for my own blog, I’ve begun a godawful novel that I hope never sees a printing press, I visit museums and galleries, I read, I write some more. Even the porn gig has provided me much to think and write about. Wherever I land, broad picture mental engagement with—and analysis of—my surroundings is what will keep me sane, even if, next to filming naked girls, the only work I can get is selling cashmere sweaters to cougars from Medina. For now, anyway, I write every day. I’m happy. I’m relaxed. And I’m not bored.

The bonus to all this writing is that some of it is getting noticed, and not just here on the Slog. I had a small article published in a local non-profit magazine in February. Just last week, I got picked up by a national blog platform (similar to CitySearch or Yelp, but with full blog posts) to write about the visual arts in Seattle. The blogging is pay-by-click, so it will earn me laughably little money, but it could open other doors. I’m also talking to a small tech company about doing a little PR writing for them. None of these will pay the bills—not yet, anyway. In the meantime, I’m hoping the US Census will give me a call.

Chastity

Have an unemployment story to share? Write to jobless@thestranger.com.

Photo by Kelly O