I haven't posted in awhile, because a new temporary job is keeping me busy. For the past five weeks I have been a field operations clerk for the U.S. Census Bureau in Northern Kentucky.
It's nice to have some letters behind my name (FOC), although I am learning that the English alphabet is a much inflated currency within the federal government. Everything in the office has an acronym. Last week I worked 10-hour days pasting AA labels on NRFU EQs, being careful to remove all LMRs while grouping them by CLD. If this means nothing to you, join the club. My boss is an OOS (an acronym I’ve yet to learn, but one that seems fitting), and the U.S. Census Bureau's computer system, which crashes with kamikaze reliability, is called PBOCS (pronounced "p-box"). There are FOS districts, ICRs and GQEs. There are, in fact, more acronyms in this job than permutations of our humble 26 letters--a shortage the government offsets with numbers. I fill out a D-308 form to be paid, I stack I-1.12-T boxes, I process D-201s into the computer, and so on.
When I'm able to take a step back from the day-to-day operations, I can see that the Census is a remarkable undertaking. The goal is to paint a freeze-frame image of the country on April 1; how many people were living where and with whom. That means collecting jail rosters and nursing home registries, walking the streets to count the homeless, and knocking on the door of every home that did not mail back their census form. Gathering this data for Northern Kentucky alone is a staggering task--the thought of hundreds of offices across the country doing the same gives me vertigo.
The Census is also a fascinating experiment in interpersonal dynamics. The Bureau has hired about almost a million temporary workers across the country to file papers, knock on doors, and keep the computers running. (Notice the recent drop in the national unemployment rate? Thank the Census Bureau.) Prospective census workers need only sign a few application papers, take a very basic half-hour written test (one of the more challenging questions on mine was "What is 3092 - 97?"), and wait for a phone call. The employees, as you can imagine, are diverse. Our office roster includes former pilots, architects, and veterans; journalists, retirees, and electricians; church-goers, pagans, and jazz musicians. Every personality type is represented.
Over the past five weeks--and I don’t think I am paranoid to say this--I have suspected there is something very New Deal-ish behind the Census 2010. Many tasks that I do in a day, a computer or a machine could do in minutes. And yet the office is full of people getting paid, more or less happy for the job, even when it is tedious. All of us inject our own sense of purpose into the work, as humans do when we question the consequence of our days. It is the existential answer to life, and we need it, and I am glad to see it in action.
Is the government intentionally hiring hoards of America’s unemployed simply to get them out of the house and to stop thinking about the recession? If so, it worked for me. I happily walk the ten minutes to the office each morning, swinging my lunch sack and stopping to smell the lilacs. And if I return a bit brain-dead in the evenings, my mind is clear again come morning, and once a week a paystub arrives in my mailbox, as if to prove that I still exist.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Sunday, April 18, 2010
My Latest Exposé
I was scanning Craigslist a couple weeks ago, sifting through the usual garbage, when I came across a post from a sculptor looking for a nude model. No prior experience necessary, just $15 an hour to sit very still, in the buff. When you've been out of work for several months, there are certain ads you respond to. This was one.
I called the guy and got the job. (It turns out the nude modeling sector of the job market is not very competitive.) We arranged the time and place. "Bring a robe," the sculptor said.
When I arrived at the sculptor's studio, his first words were: "Well, you're scrawnier than I'd hoped." A wealthy collector in Chicago had commissioned him to sculpt his partner, Tommy, and cast the piece in bronze. Since Tommy was six hours' drive away and often traveling, I would sit in for him, so the sculptor could get the anatomy just right. Tommy, I learned from a 10' x 5' poster board of 35 photos at all different angles, seemed to be cast in bronze already; he was fresh-faced and chiseled, as fine a specimen of mankind since Michelangelo's David. Looking at his biceps, which were the size of country hams, I felt scrawny indeed.
The sculptor directed me to a large Lazy Susan balanced on two benches. I stripped to my skivvies ("We'll ease into the nudity slowly," the sculptor told me) and climbed aboard. I had some initial trouble mastering the pose--right elbow perched on right knee, left knee bent and flat, left hand propped at back, chest puffed, face looking into the rising sun of some distant horizon. When I did get the pose, I began to suspect that Tommy and his partner had conspired to cut off the circulation to all my limbs. Within minutes I had lost feeling in my left butt cheek. I lost my left leg next, from the knee down. Then my right kneecap dammed the flow of my right arm's Basilic vein, which in the world of blood is about as critical as the Yangtze River. I was embarrassed to notice that behind me my left hand was slowly turning purple.
The physical discomfort was one thing, the mental anguish was something else entirely. If sitting for long periods of time almost nude in one position is a monastic exercise, I was becoming more enlightened by the minute. The biggest mental challenge came when I faced the clock on the wall. Minutes have never felt longer in all history. Fortunately the sculptor and I had plenty to talk about. No subject was off limits as he sat shaving small shards of clay from his sculpture of Tommy, which was 15 percent larger than life and made me feel punier still. Periodically he would spin me on my Lazy Susan to focus his energies on a different angle. Sometimes, as he smoothed lumps of clay onto Tommy's foot or shoulder, I had the peculiar sensation of receiving a vicarious massage. I grew very familiar with certain objects in his studio over time--I learned the names on paint tins, ladders, and an old hanging furnace (Sterling). By now I count a certain "Hercules" brand file cabinet among my closest friends.
I've worked 36.5 hours at this job so far, mostly in four-hour increments. (Any longer than that and I'm not sure I'd be able to fold myself into the car for the drive home.) It has been a unique mental and physical challenge, and I've learned a great deal about sculpture. I'd even say the job has given me a richer appreciation of art. I have never been to Florence to see the statue David, but when I do, a not-so-small part of me will be wondering how frequently Michelangelo gave his model bathroom breaks.
I called the guy and got the job. (It turns out the nude modeling sector of the job market is not very competitive.) We arranged the time and place. "Bring a robe," the sculptor said.
When I arrived at the sculptor's studio, his first words were: "Well, you're scrawnier than I'd hoped." A wealthy collector in Chicago had commissioned him to sculpt his partner, Tommy, and cast the piece in bronze. Since Tommy was six hours' drive away and often traveling, I would sit in for him, so the sculptor could get the anatomy just right. Tommy, I learned from a 10' x 5' poster board of 35 photos at all different angles, seemed to be cast in bronze already; he was fresh-faced and chiseled, as fine a specimen of mankind since Michelangelo's David. Looking at his biceps, which were the size of country hams, I felt scrawny indeed.
The sculptor directed me to a large Lazy Susan balanced on two benches. I stripped to my skivvies ("We'll ease into the nudity slowly," the sculptor told me) and climbed aboard. I had some initial trouble mastering the pose--right elbow perched on right knee, left knee bent and flat, left hand propped at back, chest puffed, face looking into the rising sun of some distant horizon. When I did get the pose, I began to suspect that Tommy and his partner had conspired to cut off the circulation to all my limbs. Within minutes I had lost feeling in my left butt cheek. I lost my left leg next, from the knee down. Then my right kneecap dammed the flow of my right arm's Basilic vein, which in the world of blood is about as critical as the Yangtze River. I was embarrassed to notice that behind me my left hand was slowly turning purple.
The physical discomfort was one thing, the mental anguish was something else entirely. If sitting for long periods of time almost nude in one position is a monastic exercise, I was becoming more enlightened by the minute. The biggest mental challenge came when I faced the clock on the wall. Minutes have never felt longer in all history. Fortunately the sculptor and I had plenty to talk about. No subject was off limits as he sat shaving small shards of clay from his sculpture of Tommy, which was 15 percent larger than life and made me feel punier still. Periodically he would spin me on my Lazy Susan to focus his energies on a different angle. Sometimes, as he smoothed lumps of clay onto Tommy's foot or shoulder, I had the peculiar sensation of receiving a vicarious massage. I grew very familiar with certain objects in his studio over time--I learned the names on paint tins, ladders, and an old hanging furnace (Sterling). By now I count a certain "Hercules" brand file cabinet among my closest friends.
I've worked 36.5 hours at this job so far, mostly in four-hour increments. (Any longer than that and I'm not sure I'd be able to fold myself into the car for the drive home.) It has been a unique mental and physical challenge, and I've learned a great deal about sculpture. I'd even say the job has given me a richer appreciation of art. I have never been to Florence to see the statue David, but when I do, a not-so-small part of me will be wondering how frequently Michelangelo gave his model bathroom breaks.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Let There Be Music
It was Hilly's birthday this week, a springy Tuesday in Cincinnati when the sun was shining and magnolia trees were dropping pink blossoms in the wind. These past six months Hilly has been missing the piano. Long, left-brained days at law school have left her hungry for music.Knowing this, I had been hunting around Craigslist and music stores for a used piano. I finally found an 80-year-old saloon upright at a local store. It was in the back of the shop, dusty and scuffed, a Jesse French & Sons from Newcastle, Indiana. It still carried a tune, and the shop owner offered me a good price on account of its age. I couldn't resist; I bought the piano and arranged for its delivery on Hilly's birthday while she was away at school.
On the morning of her birthday, Hilly considered playing hooky and staying home. I feigned excitement at the idea, but she went to school after all, and the delivery men arrived an hour later--three men to wheel and hoist the piano from the truck to the back door and through the house to its final resting place in the corner of the living room. I waited for Hilly to come home.
She returned at midday. We talked awhile in the kitchen, then walked outside to inspect our small garden. We drank lime slushees in the sun. Hilly was telling me something when we went back into the house. She wandered into the living room and stopped in mid-sentence.
Our windows were open and the sun was shining through and Hilly sat at the piano and played from memory--Bach and Debussy, Pachelbel's Canon and a tarentella by Pieczonka. Inside the instrument, hammers on leather straps struck taut strings and withdrew, an ordered chaos of wire and wood. I sat and watched her play. There was music, sun and love in our house, and job or no job, I was happy.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Old People Love Me
I spend a lot of time trolling the internet before I find a job opening I could imagine squeezing into. I've fallen into a routine to this regard. I start each morning scanning JournalismJobs.com, my way of keeping a candle burning for the hope that a Cincinnati publication is looking for a new reporter. The job postings are scarce most days, and almost never for positions here in the Queen City.
Next I look at Craigslist's Writing/Editing job section. Most posts here are from content mills looking for search-engine-optimized human blurb machines ready to churn out 400-word articles on acai berries for $10 a pop. The whole business smells like a pyramid scheme, so I don't linger. Some postings are from companies looking for writers to fill their Web sites for paltry pay. One suggested that the mere experience would be compensation enough. I also scroll through Craigslist's general job listings, where I find plenty of material for a novel, but few legitimate employment opportunities. So far I’ve sifted through postings with the following titles: "Asbestos Workers," "$$$$ HIV+? $$$$," and "COMPANY LOOKING FOR OBAMA EXPRESS GIRL! IT COULD BE YOU!"
Finally I turn to the big job sites, Monster and CareerBuilder, which offer me a list of jobs related to media and communications. Many of these jobs are with advertising agencies or PR firms, industries my journalism training taught me to disparage, but to which I am now an eager applicant. After all, what better challenge to a writer than to write copy catchy enough to sell frozen vegetables? I applied for one advertising job and reached the interview stage. The interview went well, but they finally turned me down. I thought they’d found a better qualified candidate, but two weeks later they posted an ad for the same position on CareerBuilder. Ouch. It's hard to be rejected for someone better, harder still to be rejected for no one at all.
They aren’t all agency jobs, though. Not long ago I applied for a job as the events director for a Jewish nursing home. Now I have accompanied my grandfather on several sing-a-longs to retirement villages near his Australian home, so I felt highly qualified for this position. Furthermore, my rich background in crafts would complement the position nicely. I submitted my resume and cover letter, and when I followed up a week later, I learned that I was one of 300 applicants for the position. Among them they found their events director, and it wasn’t me. It must be a recession when sing-a-long experience isn’t enough street-cred to at least get a guy an interview.
Next I look at Craigslist's Writing/Editing job section. Most posts here are from content mills looking for search-engine-optimized human blurb machines ready to churn out 400-word articles on acai berries for $10 a pop. The whole business smells like a pyramid scheme, so I don't linger. Some postings are from companies looking for writers to fill their Web sites for paltry pay. One suggested that the mere experience would be compensation enough. I also scroll through Craigslist's general job listings, where I find plenty of material for a novel, but few legitimate employment opportunities. So far I’ve sifted through postings with the following titles: "Asbestos Workers," "$$$$ HIV+? $$$$," and "COMPANY LOOKING FOR OBAMA EXPRESS GIRL! IT COULD BE YOU!"
Finally I turn to the big job sites, Monster and CareerBuilder, which offer me a list of jobs related to media and communications. Many of these jobs are with advertising agencies or PR firms, industries my journalism training taught me to disparage, but to which I am now an eager applicant. After all, what better challenge to a writer than to write copy catchy enough to sell frozen vegetables? I applied for one advertising job and reached the interview stage. The interview went well, but they finally turned me down. I thought they’d found a better qualified candidate, but two weeks later they posted an ad for the same position on CareerBuilder. Ouch. It's hard to be rejected for someone better, harder still to be rejected for no one at all.
They aren’t all agency jobs, though. Not long ago I applied for a job as the events director for a Jewish nursing home. Now I have accompanied my grandfather on several sing-a-longs to retirement villages near his Australian home, so I felt highly qualified for this position. Furthermore, my rich background in crafts would complement the position nicely. I submitted my resume and cover letter, and when I followed up a week later, I learned that I was one of 300 applicants for the position. Among them they found their events director, and it wasn’t me. It must be a recession when sing-a-long experience isn’t enough street-cred to at least get a guy an interview.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
The Macrame Job
It was a grim morning, the kind of day where the streets swirl with restless garbage and the city smells like malt liquor and Newport Lights. I was at home in the office, my face dimly lit by the computer's glow. It was another day on the job hunt, and while Hilly was away at law school, I was spending some quality time with my other partner--CareerBuilder.com. I wondered what she had in store for me today.
The site had what looked like a gem. A local publishing company was looking for an associate editor for a line of craft books. I couldn't hope for better work than with a publisher, and crafts? Hell, the learning curve couldn't be steeper than for my female condom story. I hastily assembled an e-mail with my resume and a cover letter. The letter, for purposes of credibility, included the following sentences:
I was raised in a crafts-oriented family. When I was young, my parents made candles and rope baskets, and also knitted and crocheted clothes. We were a frugal family, which encouraged us to be innovative. My sister and I helped our parents with their crafts, which they sold at regional fairs. Soon enough I was dabbling in craft interests of my own--first friendship bracelets, then macrame, and eventually tying flies with which I pursued my love of fly fishing.
Weeks later, I haven't heard from the crafts book people. Maybe they didn't buy my personal craft progression. That's just how it went, though, no joke. In any case, I kept fishing--plenty of other fish in the sea.
I find a certain thrill in searching job sites. Every time I click SEARCH, it feels like I'm sending a sonar ping out to the world, a fiber optic synapse through all the towers of the skyline and all the nameless businesses and organizations pushing paper within them. Sometimes the city answers back in shouts, and I spend hours filtering the possibilities and drafting cover letters, wondering what new career I could embark upon, what new life I might adopt. Other times the city is silent and seems drained of prospects. I guess it just depends on the day.
The site had what looked like a gem. A local publishing company was looking for an associate editor for a line of craft books. I couldn't hope for better work than with a publisher, and crafts? Hell, the learning curve couldn't be steeper than for my female condom story. I hastily assembled an e-mail with my resume and a cover letter. The letter, for purposes of credibility, included the following sentences:
I was raised in a crafts-oriented family. When I was young, my parents made candles and rope baskets, and also knitted and crocheted clothes. We were a frugal family, which encouraged us to be innovative. My sister and I helped our parents with their crafts, which they sold at regional fairs. Soon enough I was dabbling in craft interests of my own--first friendship bracelets, then macrame, and eventually tying flies with which I pursued my love of fly fishing.
Weeks later, I haven't heard from the crafts book people. Maybe they didn't buy my personal craft progression. That's just how it went, though, no joke. In any case, I kept fishing--plenty of other fish in the sea.
I find a certain thrill in searching job sites. Every time I click SEARCH, it feels like I'm sending a sonar ping out to the world, a fiber optic synapse through all the towers of the skyline and all the nameless businesses and organizations pushing paper within them. Sometimes the city answers back in shouts, and I spend hours filtering the possibilities and drafting cover letters, wondering what new career I could embark upon, what new life I might adopt. Other times the city is silent and seems drained of prospects. I guess it just depends on the day.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Will Write for Food
Many of you will know that I moved to Cincinnati last fall with my girlfriend, Hilly, who is attending law school at a local university. Neither of us had ever imagined visiting this part of America, let alone living here. In the months before our move, we had trouble finding anyone who had ever actually been to Cincinnati. Whether or not they had, many thought it prudent to warn us about our future home.
"Good museums, but a lot of fat people," we were told. "Oh sure, Cincinnati. They make a casserole out of Coca-Cola," said another. Many confused it for Cleveland, home of the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, and a happy city by all accounts, but on the opposite end of Ohio.
I'll admit to referencing an atlas myself, days before we pulled into the city last fall with a laden car and open minds. We found a friendly little house to rent in Northern Kentucky, a stone's throw (well, more like a musket shot) across the Ohio River from downtown Cincinnati.
Within weeks Hilly was settling into her classes, and I was making appointments with the editors of local publications. Optimistically, I decided to freelance until I could secure a full-time position at the Cincinnati Enquirer, perhaps, or a local magazine. I set to work, dum de dee, finding work. Earnestly. I woke up early, walked briskly, and shook hands firmly.
At this point of the story I will tolerate a yawn. By now, of course, the plot's cliche: idealistic young journalist meets dying journalism industry, then pauses to reconsider his life's dreams. "One man," I imagine a narrator growling, "One unemployable skill... On a crash course with destiny!" Melodrama aside, this is a significant moment of reckoning for me. Which, I suppose, is why I am starting this blog.
I didn't admit defeat after realizing that a full-time position at a publication wasn't out there just waiting for me to walk into it. I've freelanced before, and I know how to be dogged and persistent. I started pitching stories to local editors. Before long, I had published a couple pieces in CityBeat, the local weekly. One was about a growing population of mentally ill homeless in Cincinnati. Another was about mountaintop removal coal mining in southeastern Kentucky. I wrote a story for Slate about the ship-breaking industry in India. At one point an editor at Cincinnati Magazine asked me to write a definitive article on female condoms. Who was I to turn down work? I took the assignment and my 2,000-word piece was published in February.
All the while, I have been scanning employment Web sites, writing cover letters (23 to date), fine-tuning my resume, and e-mailing human resources departments. After several months of this I remain unemployed, but looking for work has given me a wealth of material which I hope to record in this blog. My experience is a small chapter in the much larger stories of the recession and the decline of print journalism, but I hope to tell it with humor and whatever perspective my position offers. Thanks for following me, a young man in love and out of work in middle America.
"Good museums, but a lot of fat people," we were told. "Oh sure, Cincinnati. They make a casserole out of Coca-Cola," said another. Many confused it for Cleveland, home of the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, and a happy city by all accounts, but on the opposite end of Ohio.
I'll admit to referencing an atlas myself, days before we pulled into the city last fall with a laden car and open minds. We found a friendly little house to rent in Northern Kentucky, a stone's throw (well, more like a musket shot) across the Ohio River from downtown Cincinnati.
Within weeks Hilly was settling into her classes, and I was making appointments with the editors of local publications. Optimistically, I decided to freelance until I could secure a full-time position at the Cincinnati Enquirer, perhaps, or a local magazine. I set to work, dum de dee, finding work. Earnestly. I woke up early, walked briskly, and shook hands firmly.
At this point of the story I will tolerate a yawn. By now, of course, the plot's cliche: idealistic young journalist meets dying journalism industry, then pauses to reconsider his life's dreams. "One man," I imagine a narrator growling, "One unemployable skill... On a crash course with destiny!" Melodrama aside, this is a significant moment of reckoning for me. Which, I suppose, is why I am starting this blog.
I didn't admit defeat after realizing that a full-time position at a publication wasn't out there just waiting for me to walk into it. I've freelanced before, and I know how to be dogged and persistent. I started pitching stories to local editors. Before long, I had published a couple pieces in CityBeat, the local weekly. One was about a growing population of mentally ill homeless in Cincinnati. Another was about mountaintop removal coal mining in southeastern Kentucky. I wrote a story for Slate about the ship-breaking industry in India. At one point an editor at Cincinnati Magazine asked me to write a definitive article on female condoms. Who was I to turn down work? I took the assignment and my 2,000-word piece was published in February.
All the while, I have been scanning employment Web sites, writing cover letters (23 to date), fine-tuning my resume, and e-mailing human resources departments. After several months of this I remain unemployed, but looking for work has given me a wealth of material which I hope to record in this blog. My experience is a small chapter in the much larger stories of the recession and the decline of print journalism, but I hope to tell it with humor and whatever perspective my position offers. Thanks for following me, a young man in love and out of work in middle America.
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