It’s the first day of summer.  My phone is no more and I am not due for an upgrade until September.  Of course my mother just figured out how to text her friends on her church committee last week and is unwilling to let me have HER phone which she previously never used, not even to call 911 when she fell off the kitchen stool while reaching for the flour at the top of the cupboard.  Of course she was reaching for the flour to bake me a cake so it was my fault.  The cake was to celebrate a job interview.  Obviously I didn’t get the job.  When an interview begins with “I’m sorry, we thought you were someone else,” it is not a good sign.

But I digress.  Summer is about escapism.  Escapism in the form of movies and stories.  I know I promised you guys movies a few months back, then delivered nothing past our inaugural film.  That’s my bad.  Despite that failure, I am now offering in addition to movies, short stories in the media section.  That’s our goal for the summer here folks.  Build up the ole media library.

So we are NOT taking a break for the summer as a number of people have inquired.  What we have had is a technical malfunction uploading posts.  My mistake, but here at Debtor’s Prison we really are in debt and you can’t go replacing your phone just because you fell into a kiddie pool while running from a dog that the owner released after asking “why would a 30 year-old man offer to paint my mailbox?”

Sigh.

Anyway, we’ll do our best to recreate the lost posts.  Back up your stuff people.  Back up Back up Back up Back up!

I am just beginning to come out of the acute depression of getting my interview cancelled for my dream job.  The sad thing was it wasn’t even so much the prospect of finally getting a job that enticed me, it was the opportunity for the dignity of putting on a suit and speaking with another professional in a competent matter about an area of law I happen to specialize in. I was talking to Triforce about it and he likened it to enjoying a date regardless of whether was going to be sex. He then laughed in my face.

The worst thing wasn’t missing the interview or the job that went along with it. It was the timing. When you’re unemployed and seasons are generally meaningless all calendar events sneak up on you. But it has recently come to my attention that Memorial Day is next weekend. The working world slows down and a glut of interns hit the market…permanent hiring is put on hold until after Labor Day. It currently is the 5th month of the year. Labor Day occurs in the 9th. So sad.

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So I landed an interview.  One cover letter out of the literally tens (yes) tens of thousands I have sent out over the past couple of years hit a bulls eye.  And I mean it hit a bulls eye.  I am talking about the exact department of my exact specialty. I received a call right away.  The HR woman was in contact with me everyday.  I had an itinerary and directions to the office.  I had a list of real people I could research on the company website.  I booked a hotel for the interview at their branch office.  I was all set to go.

It fell through.  Big surprise.  But its not so much that it fell through but how it fell through.  I’ve had a ton of interviews not work out and I had a laundry list of reasons in the back of my head – not enough experience, hasn’t worked in over two years, he’s too old, he’s too young, he has too many degrees, etc.  I had prepared myself for that disappointment.  But none of those reasons are the reason my interview fell through.

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Wahoo! Don’t forget to click on Politics for a more thorough reaction from Alpha Man.

One of the few respites I have from the monotonous shame that is my existence is Calvin and Hobbes. One of the things Calvin and Hobbes enjoy is playing a game called “Calvin Ball” a nonsensical game where you make rules as you go and the only consistent aspect seems to be wearing a mask and using a volleyball. Life is not supposed to be like that. But it is.

I still feel that shame is by far the worst part of my lot. It’s not the poverty. It’s not watching the debt for a useless item I worked hard for grow. However, if I had to choose a second, I would say it is the feeling of unfairness or more accurately, that somebody changed the rules of this life game I’ve been playing at the most inopportune time.

Think of life as a race say, across the country. Then, at just the precise moment when you’ve exhausted most of your resources building a comfortable lead suddenly the race is for the opposite coast from the one you’d been heading toward. That’s how I feel when I am alone in the woods and there is no immediate shame trigger.

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First let me provide a link

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legal_skills/2011/04/new-scholarship-is-the-law-school-scam-blogging-movement-influencing-the-legal-profession.html

And no, we’re not mentioned by name but many of our brother/sister blogs are.  But this is not about us.  It is about academia OFFICIALLY recognizing us. 

When you don’t have a job one of the things you suffer from is a lack of identity.  That’s how I feel right now.  But I do have this blog.  And in a strange way, I feel oddly validated.  So check out the link.

I still consider myself unemployed.  While I don’t spend 10 hours a day looking for a job like I used to in the past, I’d say I still put in 20 hours over the average week.  I spend another 35 hours doing what I need to do to get by, which mostly involves acquiring the necessities of a modern western lifestyle without having to pay for them or do something illegal.  However, for the first time I see how people cease to be unemployed and graduate to simply not working.  And for the first time my life does not seem so bad.

I have been spending a fair amount of time with an underemployed fellow.  While he won’t write for the blog directly or let me go into too many specifics about his plight, he has shared some details about his life that makes me feel pretty good about where I stand now.  Basically, he has all the disadvantages of a job and none of the benefits.

Let me explain.

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Sigh.  So Mike Triforce went over how to network/ask for a job.  Now let’s deal with the opposite.  How to blow someone off.  First the story, then we’ll go over what was wrong with it.

I went to church with my mom and saw a woman I emailed four months ago about a job.  Yeah I know, I didn’t ask right but whatever.  The woman accidentally makes eye contact with me and says loudly in front of the whole congregation “I’m SO sorry for not getting back to you.” Now at this point I try to escape but I am boxed in by old people.  “I talked to the General Counsel” at this point I stop her and remind her that I was not applying for a legal position.  She continues “so I talked to General Counsel” I stop her and explain to her that to get a job in a GC office you need 10-15 yrs plus experience practicing.  She continues “so I talked to General Counsel and he referred me to our website.  Did you know we have job postings online? Maybe you should apply online.  I’ll keep asking around.  Hang in there champ.”

Now, let us begin with the critique.

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…even if you don’t have no porno mags.  Beastie Boys! Ok, I am dating myself.  Plus who doesn’t know about internet porn? Not that I go to internet porn sites.

*cough*

SO living at home.  I am not sure if I’ve ever divorced living at home from the shame of unemployment and/or student debt you can’t pay off. This makes sense given the fact that without those two circumstances you presumably wouldn’t be living at home.  I tried to think of reasons why someone not in that situation would be living at home.  I came up with terminal disease, either your own or your parent’s…then I got depressed and couldn’t think of anything else.  Right before I decided to think of something else to write it dawned on me.  People also live at home on the other side of the economic stupidity wall: in order to save for something, like a house or to not go into debt or childcare. Ok, fair enough.  Let’s break it down.

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