For the Love of Unemployment!!

At the depths of my soul there is this warm and tender place where I really just wants to be loved and to love every single last person that I come across.  This is a difficult thing to bare.  There are lots of people out there and they all have their flaws and their amazing things that make them burst out of crowds.  We all have these things, we all are wonderful.  And I guess it is how we handle the fluctuations within ourselves and thus who we end up presenting to the world that makes us stand out to more people than not.  I must say that what the last couple years have done to me is to threaten some of what I bring to the table in terms of all things amazing. 

I am needier than I once was, and I think it hurts me daily.  But I don't think it is that I as a person have become more needy, just that my situation has created more of a need within me right now.  There aren't as many avenues today to feel love as there once was.  A wonderful person said to me the other night that me and my situation take up most all of the space in our conversations.  I didn't really know how to react.  I know this I suppose, and I know that I am spending so much time right now leaning on other people for support.  I need to talk, I need to stay positive, to have fun with others, even you could say to be distracted by the wonderfulness of people and their humanity.  And I don't mean that to belittle anyone as simply a distraction, but the point is that we all have things in our lives that provide us with supportive emotions, positive feelings and negative ones.  Finding a balance that allows us to function on a level of happiness that makes it worth soldering on with a smile is important.  I have had to rely on others too much for that, for too long of a time now. 

You know, when you're job is going well, you can manage personal strife.  When you're happy with your personal situation and take pleasure from it, a shitty job somehow seems half as bad.  Someone to go home to, friends to hang out with, things to do, whatever.  But when these other things are all sporadic elements of daily ups and down and don't provide much support, work seems worse, interesting things seem less interesting, and you start reaching out for more space.  Encroaching upon the world. 

I think this is where I am right now.  I have no job, I have a tenuous housing situation, and a good deal of personal turbulence.  It all forces me to lean on other people for emotional support. And people are something that the unemployed are not generally surrounded by all day.  For example: today was an absolute emotional roller coaster for no reason at all.  I woke up just fine, good thoughts for a positive day.  But then I went  to check on an application I submitted a while back for a position that I really liked: assistant to the democracy program at a research, legal, think tanky thing.  I was of course resoundingly shunned at the door.  They don't have time for that kind of in-person stuff, I'm only worth what I can put on a piece of paper after all.  Yeah, I could have bullshitted my way past the gatekeeper, faking knowledge of something or an appointment, but I'd like to think that my integrity won't give way to my desperation.  So I left not thinking much of it until I got on my bike and started feeling this physical reaction.  Was it anxiety, stress, despair, desperation?  Something surrounding all that most likely.  My throat was tensing up, my breath became a bit askew.  Why?  Why would some simple guy not alowing me the time of day mean so much?  Why would I react like that?  I called my mom, texted a friend. 

Then I pounded away on an application for another hiking store job.  This time a big chain that would probably pay me this time.  lol.  I've been waiting for openings there for months and finally.... there are 14!!  Yes, fourteen openings for sales floor people.  I'm golden I'm thinking!!  I get the application in and ride my not so shiny Schwinn right the hell down there and walk in the door to tell them exctly what I'm there to do. 

"I just applied 15 minutes ago, and I want to speak to a manager about it."  

I get sent downstairs to the next level of interrogation.

"I know they don't usually see people, but I've got experience!" I pronounce in a subtly magnanimous tone. 

Person to person, I slowly get closer until after a decent wait, wala!!  I get one minute with the hiring manager and the assistant manager of the store as they walk past me on the way to something usually more important than unemployed stalkers.  And it works, my 30 second elevator view into "timistan" that I punctuated with a lots of eye contact, overt magnanimity, and a smile that seemed to have won them both over. 

"What's your name", the manager said as he pulled out a pen and wrote it down, the hiring manager then said "you'll be hearing from us soon".  

I of course cap it off with a

"Hey, I'm ready now, I can start tomorrow and be on the floor for labor day!"  

I'm smiling as I head for the door.  Maybe it just might have worked! 

Also, just before I left to go there, I got an email back from a woman I interviewed with a month ago with a Children's organization.  She said I hadn't gotten the job because other candidates had food justice expertise she couldn't ignore, but said that she really enjoyed our interview and my perspective on justice, youth, and life, and that I would be great in a classroom with kids.  She wants me to apply for the other jobs I'd seen just recently (yes, she was following up from my pestering her) and that she'd stump for me in their office.  This is great!  Especially on top of the hiking store...  I come back and get started.  Ugh... now I've got so many applications to do, but when?  I get another application in that a friend sent me for a temp agency working with non-profits.  I send out an email that may some day lead to my current dream position.  I'm feeling good. 

But then I start yearning for someone to talk to and I start wondering why I haven't heard from such and such.  As if people don't have things to do.  It starts getting deeper and deeper within me.  Why does this get so internalized?  I mean who cares?  It's a text message, a simple communique that means so little in the larger scheme of things.  So why am I so emotionally week right now?  Why do I want or need so desperately to be loved right now?  Is it because my every day is spent getting rejected?  Cover letter after cover letter, no response.  And I looked at the position for the legal think tanky democracy position I stoped by at and the person in that spot now; shit, yeah I'm not going to get it.  I've got plenty of democratization experience, researching, writing, whatever, but its all on international issues.  Sure I'll get work in Kenya, or Moldova, or the Mars.  But no work in the US.  All my experiece is abroad, and on issues abroad, how does that translate here?  I know the world, but how many people here care about the world?  We have a lot of our own problems.

So anyway, back to the narrative.... I decide to head to a movie, 8:30 at Union sq, that Borne movie.  So I get there and its not there.  I try the other Union Square theater, nope not at 8:30, only at 10.  So I missed it all and go home annoyed at my computer, slowly emotionally digressing.  It's a freaking movie?!?!  Turns out Google somehow thinks that the Union Square in NYC movie link is best suited to send you Union Square in San Franscisco's cinema page... who knew!?  But hey, their three hours behind maybe I can still make that one!?  Need to get that teleporter of mine fixed anyway... ;)  But yeah, my point is that this stuff doesn't matter, yet it so tremendously affects me right now.  Little things that are now a struggle that never were.  But most importantly, what I am trying to say, is that its about the space I am taking in other people's lives. 

I sit around wanting to hear from them, needing to almost.  And in my head I worry and wonder like I never used to.  Like the bonds are somehow closer now.  Like I somehow need them more now than I once did.  I never used to need people.  I simply wanted them.  But now it feels more like a need.  Like I have such an uphill battle everyday just to stay upright that it helps to have someone to hold on to.  I miss Occupy, I miss my Africa work, but most of all I miss being strong enough to work on them.  It is sad. 


I know that I am hurting myself in my personal relationships right now.  I dive in, give myself to every person I meet.  But they don't do the same.  They don't need to, shouldn't even.  They have jobs, and lives, and friends, and whatever else content stable people have.  I have none of that.  I have dreams and desires, and lots of potential energy, but little of the kinetic stuff.  This is a long way away from the me that I've always known.  Yes, I've been through spells when I haven't had work or didn't win the big game or whatever and I reach out more, as we all do.  But when things are going well you don't need other people to help things go well.  I don't know how I'd manage if I didn't have so much self-confidence.  Even as I write this in fleeting despair, I feel that success will come, that some day I will say I told you so!  If I didn't believe in myself and my abilities I'd be a mess laying in an alley way somewhere. 

I guess in all of this the only thing I can ask is that people try to understand where I am.  I reach out because I need something to hold on to.  I take up this space because I'm struggling.  And it pains me to know it hurts you all, all I want to do is know more about you, about your life, but all I'm capable of right now it seems is trying to hold mine together.  So I talk and talk about my dreams, desires, and potential rather than listening to stories about your jobs, and lives, and friends - because that's what I want - and what I want for you, and what I want for everyone and their relationships, but feel I can't do.  To be able to revel together in ourselves as strong separate wholes.  Unfortunately for my part in that bargain right now I am a volatile needy half.  I promise it is not the life I've had and want, but it is the one I'm in right now, yes in the plight that I'm in Sam, Sam I am.  So please world, bare with me.  I will return both here and there, as a mouse, and in a house... we all will.... 

Why Sierra Leone?

I was posed a very good question last night and thought that I should answer here on this page as well.

"You are from the US, what about looking to help the people right here in this country that need it as well?"

 I was caught a bit off guard by the question and I'm not sure why.  I ended up with pretty much a three tiered answer.  Firstly, I do not see myself as an "American".  I know that nationalism is ingrained within us all from an early age - and not just into American's, but into just about everyone.  National pride, the Olympics, holidays, school history lessons, wars, they are all laced with a "what's within our borders" versus/in comparison to "what's within their borders".  I struggle with this because, A, I am trying to minimize as much competition in life as I can, and B, what makes a person born on one side of a line in the sand more or less valuable than someone born on the other?  I consider myself a 'citizen of the world' (Though I hate the cliché), and more importantly I view us all as equal partners in both humanity and our whole ecosystem.  I believe that we all need and deserve compassion and 'human' security as much as anyone else, no matter where we come from or live.

Secondly, and probably most importantly to me, ties directly into the first one.  As I see us all as being of equal worth, then effort should strictly be based on need.  I am poor by US standards, yet I have food, shelter, familial support, education, security, etc.  There are a tremendous amount of people in the US struggling these days - especially given the economic situation we currently face - but imagine what this recession is doing to people in the developing world that rely on US and European investment when there isn't even money being spent here?  Where do they sell their goods when consumer spending is down in the rich countries?  People in poorer countries were, and are, far worse off in terms of basic human needs (as judged by our Western measures).  A great one of these measures is the UN's Human Development Report.  Just think about this, when adjusted for purchasing power (PPP) the average person makes 679 US dollars in one year!!  (in terms of per capita GDP - dividing the population of the country by it's total dollar value output). They measure it all equally in terms of what it can by, looking at each country on one scale.

Now imagine that for yourself?!   If you make $679 in one month in the US you are desperately poor, that is $8,148 annually.  Now imagine a family of four, five, six... making that for the whole year!!  The people in these developing world countries are truly poor.  Not what we consider 'poor' here in the US, we make $45,592 per year in per capita GDP and consider a family of four to be poor if they make under $22,050 annually.  The US is a very rich country (8th in terms of per capita GDP), and it ranks 13th out of 182 countries in the world as measured by the Human Development Report.  Sierra Leone ranks 180th.  Third from last.  That means that statistically speaking, of the 6.8 billion people in this world there are only .006% of people live a worse life than those in Sierra Leone.  99.99% of the world population lives at a higher standard of living than Sierra Leoneans.  They truly need the assistance more than we do.

I should also say though that it pains me to have to 'prioritize' or 'triage' the situation like this.  I read a statistic several years ago that said that 2 billion people will go either without adequate food or clean water that year - and this is a global phenomena that touches even the US.  You can go to either the South Bronx or Appalachia and you will see destitute people.  People that could use help.  Yet they have outlets, social services, food stamps, homeless shelters, educational and training services, etc.  These services are grossly inadequate in my view, but this is what a social welfare system does and can do, it helps to provide for those in need.  In Sierra Leone, none of these services exist, there is not social safety net - and they really need it.

This line of volatile thinking above segway's well into my third point.  I think that if anyone wants to help the US and its poor, that it is never going to start in this country.  The entire system is way to engrained with the arrogancy of itself.  The US is the world's super power.  It is a fully established socio-economic entity that has lead the world for a century.  It views democratic capitalism as the victor, and its political, cultural, and economic systems are far too entrenched to be able to change or experiment with on any level.  Just think of the American political debate, red v. blue, liberals v. conservatives, republicans v. democrats, and NO ONE wants to hear what they other side is saying.  There are no alternatives, mainstream or otherwise, especially and truly revolutionary ones!!    Intractable ideology and closed minds.  Need I say anything more than simply refer to the New York and California State budgets?

America is a mess, but one with such fortified positions and issues, that it is virtually unnavigable.  I believe that to bring about any change in America it is going to taken proven results from elsewhere, and a collapse of the American system and its subsequent standing in the world - which some would say is currently happening.  However, with no alternative pathways for human development and security on a larger scale right now, we are left wanting.  This is where my interests lie, looking to create new pathways to human development that break free of current ideological constraints.

This project is not just about Sierra Leone, it is about the US, it is about Europe, Asia, Africa, the whole of the Americas, everywhere.  Sierra Leone is a place that I have studied and have developed an affinity for.  It is a small country of just under 6 million people that has been devastated by a recent civil war and has a relatively cleanish slate build upon.  Yet it still maintains incredibly proud traditions and history as it was created to be a home for freed slaves, and was once considered the "Athens of West Africa".  Projects undertaken there are not only to assist the local population, but can also be used to learn from and then to be used elsewhere.  If some of the ideas that we are working with can become successful, then the whole world could benefit from them in time - including the United States.  Think local, act global.