Funemployment

Heard a newscast yesterday about the alleged phenomenon of “Funemployment.” That is, the newly unemployed millions of us are just having a grand old time being out of work and not able to find anything. We’re rediscovering ourselves, spending time with the family we never did before, and developing talents that would otherwise go unexplored. We’re supposed to be having the time of our lives.

This lady reporter, I think, put an “F” in front of the word “unemployment” to get her news story. I’d like to take an “F” and put it in front of the word “you” and deliver it to her, and, while I’m at it, to the President and to the Democrat party in power for the last 19 months.

There is nothing fun about being out of work.

There is nothing fun about constantly having to stay upbeat, positive, enthusiastic, and the never-ending “fake-it-until-you-make-it” mask that we unemployed have to wear.

There is nothing fun about the 24-7 care of a bruised and broken mental bundle of ego and self-esteem.

There is nothing fun about trying to find a job I’m passionless about in an industry that is not hiring solely to pay an inflated mortgage on a starter house that I don’t even like and has no resale value.

There is nothing fun about juggling the days you mail out checks to pay bills, hoping you won’t get that $35-per-check overdraft fee. (I’ve never bounced a check in my life, so there’s that extra blow to the self-esteem should that happen.)

There’s nothing fun about counting down the weeks before your unemployment insurance runs out and you don’t know what to do after that. Oh, and there’s nothing fun about being labeled a “99er” by multimillionaires such as Rush Limbaugh, et. al.

“Oh, but you get to spend time with the girls,” well-wishers tell me. “You’re doing a fantastic job raising them!”

I appreciate that. But Wells Fargo, PSEG, Verizon, AT&T, Chase Home Finance, Aetna, Cigna, A&P, Capital One Bank, my children’s doctors, Target, CVS – just to name a few – might not be so appreciative. It doesn’t help me sleep better at night (I average five hours of sleep daily). It doesn’t help when I tell the wife that we can’t afford this or we can’t afford that. Or forget about the wife – my children are starting to get very inquisitive.

So, let’s halt this meme that all of us unemployed are lounging in the backyard hammock with Piña Coladas in hand. Or that we’re wearing smocks and sitting at easels painting landscapes. Yes, during the rare hour a day of downtime I have, I’ve polished up my short stories and my two novels and sent them out. But you know what? Publishing companies just aren’t taking risks on first-time authors as they would have, say, five or ten years ago. In fact, a lot of publishing company employees are worried about keeping their jobs (according to the one contact I have in the business).

I can only hope and pray that things will change after the first Tuesday in November, and that the new leaders we send to Washington will do the right things necessary to get this economy up and running again.


***

All right, no more pity parties, I promise!

True fun stuff to be posted in September!

Best Reads

The Emmy’s were last night. I did not watch – I detest awards shows – but the wife did, alternating between them and Casino Royale. So I decided to appeal to the nerdish book worm inside me (never far from the surface) and list the Best Reads Awards for the past couple of years.

Here goes:

Best Read, 2009:

Kim, by Rudyard Kipling

Runner Up:

A Game of Thrones, by George R. R. Martin


Best Read, 2008:

Sandkings, by George R. R. Martin

Runner Up:

Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson


Best Read, 2007:

Eifelheim, by Michael Flynn

Runner Up:

Midworld, by Alan Dean Foster


Best Read, 2006:

Quo Vadis, by Henryk Sienkewicz

Runner Up:

(tie) Red Planet, by Robert Heinlein
(tie) Conquerors from the Darkness, by Robert Silverberg


Best Read, 2005:

Shardik, by Richard Adams

Runner Up:

Who Can Replace a Man? by Brian Aldiss


Best Read, 2004:

Way of a Pilgrim, by Anonymous

Runner Up:

Zen and the Art of Writing, by Ray Bradbury


Best Read, 2003:

The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell

Runner Up:

Burr, by Gore Vidal


Best Read, 2002:

Hyperion, by Dan Simmons

Runner Up:

The Warrior at World’s End, by Lin Carter


Best Read, 2001:

The Spinner, by Doris Piserchia

Runner Up:

A Canticle for Liebowitz, by Walter Miller


Best Read, 2000:

The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury

Runner Up:

Lord of Light, by Roger Zelazny


Honorable Mentions of the 90s:

Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse
Moby Dick, by Herman Melville
Hocus Pocus, by Kurt Vonnegut
The Puppet Masters, by Robert Heinlein
Mars, by Ben Bova
Rendezvous With Rama and Rama II, by Arthur C. Clarke
Sphere, The Andromeda Strain, The Terminal Man, by Michael Crichton
Debt of Honor, Without Remorse, Executive Orders, and Sum of All Fears, by Tom Clancy


Now this would be an awards show I could get behind …

Beach Retreat

No, I didn’t go to the beach.

But the family did.

I, as usual, stayed behind in the bungalow. And I got a lot done, also as usual, when I’m left alone.

We left Saturday morning after I balanced the checkbook, paid the bills, and ran a few errands. Arriving at the Jersey shore (not that one, the one we go to has a lot more self-respect) by 1, the girls and my father-in-law piled into the car and hit the dunes.

The weather was so, so beautiful – sunny, crisp, zero humidity, a nice breeze – that I just couldn’t spend the afternoon indoors. I laid out a towel beneath an old oak tree in the backyard, brought out a pillow, and spent the next six hours, basically, finishing The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, the loose autobiography-of-sorts of Lawrence of Arabia.

Ah, pleasure!

As the chapters passed I chased the sun’s shadows on the cool lawn. At one point I nearly fell asleep, which would have marked the first time I fell asleep in nature’s arms since … well, since those crazy nights in Wildwood in the late 80s, but that sleep was artificially assisted.

Anyway, the troops returned at 7 for regimented showering, changing, and motoring over to a mom-and-pop I-talian restaurant. We shared antipasto salads and lasagna. Afterwards, we treated the little ones (and ourselves) to ice cream from a neighboring shop. Got ’em all home at 9:45, way past their bedtimes, and got ’em all down by 10.

Next morning, this morning, though it seems a week ago, we got up early, showered, dressed, and met my father-in-law and his lady friend for breakfast at a diner. Then we all drove to his church for noon mass.

Then a repeat of yesterday afternoon, though curtailed somewhat. This time Patch was nearing a meltdown – having no nap Saturday as well as a late night – so I kept her back at the bungalow with me. The others left, and, lo and behold, Patches wouldn’t sleep, though she held it together.

She allowed me to skim through a biography of Lawrence. One of those biographies where the biographer simply despises his subject. Everything Lawrence said or did was a lie or evil or wrong or stupid. Whatever.* But it did clear up a bunch of mainly logistical concerns about Seven Pillars.

Feeling spiritual, I also read a whole bunch of the ending chapters of Genesis.

The others got back with sandwiches, which we all devoured, and we hit the road by 6. Since fifty-percent of the population of New Jersey likes to drive the Garden State Parkway on Sunday evenings, we didn’t get home until 8.

Somewhat restless after helping put the girls down, I went for a restless walk. Got all sweaty and worked up into a foul mood, strolling past the darkened houses in my town, every other one lit up with the flickering hypnotic light of the flatscreen demigod, commanding loyalty and subservience. I noted the constellations, Cassiopeia and Ursa Major, and some of the stars, such as Arcturus. Made a mental note to bone back up on my astronomy.

Anyway, busy week I’m not looking forward to. Tomorrow we visit Yiayia’s in the morning. She’s the Greek sitter who sat Little One for the first four years of her life. I’ll be plied with all sorts of Greek food and uncomfortable questions about my crappy health and my ineffectual job search. Then it’s off to some boy’s birthday party, where Little One will run around ingesting pizza and sugar and I’ll be left holding Patch, napless for the third day in a row.

Tuesday and Wednesday we have to have a training-wheel-less bike ride at the park and a last go at the town swimming pool. Sarcastic yay on both counts. We need to get Little One’s summer projects all dotted and crossed and ready for the start of school on Thursday. Thursday and Friday will be half-days. Oh, and I still have to fit grocery shopping and laundry in somewhere, as well as working on my website, my short stories, my next novel, that and this and those and these.

But I do have some humorous posts in my head; they just need to be written. And a review of Seven Pillars is already mentally half-completed.

I need another body. Or thirty more hours a week alone time.


* I once made the mistake of reading a biography of composer Jean Sibelius by an author who viscerally hated the man. How can you hate a composer, fer cryin’ out loud? Well, this writer did. Ascribed every petty, low-down, unscrupulous and evil motive to Sibelius that Sibs almost became a moustache-twisting cardboard caricature. So, to paraphrase the words of Peter Kreeft, I only read books by authors who love their subject.