Tell Your Story Video (2012), by Christopher Hollander (with the TYS Team)

You may click on the link below, or cut and paste this address into your browser, to watch a video by Chris Hollander, the main videographer for the 2010-2012 Tell Your Story interview project. The TYS team interviewed jobless and underemployed persons in Colorado Springs.

https://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=159764824095272&comments

************

Coming Up: This next week’s Better Endings topic is Surviving Disasters. Please send me your insights as a Guest Blog or for Story of the Week (with your author’s byline, bio and website info included). Any form of expression is welcome, from your journal thoughts to poems, photos, artwork or a short story. I would love to tell YOUR story!

We Are Not Lazy! Stories of ‘New Hope’ Beyond Unemployment

This week’s Better Endings principle that we will discuss on Saturday is “Fortitude,” in relation to our weekly topic of Unemployment. The fiery forge of experience that joblessness or underemployment plunges people into can lead to either despair or ‘New Hope’, and often both at the same time. The following voices and brief stories celebrate the adaptive strategies of four people who have told their stories to help others.

Kelly, Age 58, over 5 years un- and underemployed

      “You have to stay positive because it’s going to work out, it really is.”

Kelly is homeless.  She is 58 and has been alternately un- and underemployed for over five years.  Kelly has a part-time job working a few hours a week at a Taco Bell.  However, since in order to afford an apartment Kelly would need a full-time job, she lives at a Salvation Army shelter.

What has helped Kelly to establish ‘new hope’ is her living situation and supportive family ties.  The Salvation Army shelter has a program such that Kelly gives 70% of her weekly Taco Bell paycheck to the shelter staff, who deposit that into a savings account for her. This way, since her room and board are provided for free at the shelter, Kelly has thousands of dollars saved. In return, Kelly volunteers several hours every week at the shelter and she also volunteers at a local history museum. She uses some financial aid to attend classes at a community college.  Kelly says that the Salvation Army shelter empowers her to maintain hope because she can sleep in a clean, healthy place.  She visits her daughter who is in the military, and she provides free childcare for her grandchildren.  Kelly told us that her self-esteem is very high and, despite being ‘homeless’, Kelly is very hopeful and upbeat.  She says, “I don’t know how to explain it, but I know it’s going to be okay.”

 Susan, Age 48, over 4 years un- and underemployed

“I was doing a lot for Habitat for Humanity. I really enjoyed doing that. And I started volunteering for my church group. We sell things at Broncos games to raise money…I’ve put a lot of hours into that.”

Susan, 48 and unemployed in the traditional sense for now over 4 years, engaged for her first two years of unemployment working independently with an entrepreneurial, multilevel-marketing program. She relied on collaborative friendship networks and attended conferences to learn about how to sell products and develop subordinate agents. She saw this program as a way that not just herself but a wide network of people could all achieve financial freedom from traditional work and its capricious nature today. Susan was receiving unemployment benefits plus she relied on prior savings to make ends meet for as long as she could. She said she used to dread going to a traditional industry job every day.  Since the time of her Tell Your Story interviews, Susan has drifted away from the multi-marketing scheme; she is now managing rental homes for one of the friends from her spiritual group. She has moved to live with a boyfriend who is also her management business partner. Although their income is still quite low and most of her savings have now been expended, Susan continues to be very active with her volunteer work and she says she is happy to never have to return to an “industry” based, “9 to 5 job”.

Goddrick and Sybil, Ages 52 and 56 over, 6 years un- and underemployed

“And so he’s not sleeping and I’m not sleeping because he’s not sleeping and we’re both angry and frustrated and so everything else bothers you; the kids leaving their socks on the floor and not picking up you know and every little thing is heightened because of that stress and  it’s the money.  It’s just horrible. And it’s like he would do any job. Even if he got like me; an eight dollar an hour job, that would be twenty four hundred dollars a month and it’s like – I was telling him, and I may do this, but the Broadmoor is hiring housekeeping tomorrow and  it’s ten dollars an hour and I’m  like, you know, for as hard as I’m working at 7-11 loading the cooler and standing on my feet doing all this other hard work cleaning, changing the trash outside, maybe I should go because for ten dollars an hour, that’s four hundred dollars more a month  which would really make a difference in our life right now. So if I’m going to be not respected and belittled and the fact that I went to school and got all these degrees and did all these things I thought to prepare myself to have a better life and it’s just gonna be crap anyway, maybe I should just do another job that’s at least gonna pay more because I’m not happy in what I’m doing and so maybe cleaning up somebody else’s pubic hair for two dollars more an hour is what I need to do. And it’s hard, it’s a self-esteem and pride issue and it’s hard.” 

That about says it all, doesn’t it? Sybil and Goddrick have three boys who are active in Boy Scouts, wrestling, and their spiritual group. Goddrick coaches wrestling for one of the boy’s schools and has been a Scouts leader for many years. Since returning to play saxophone for a local band, Goddrick’s focus has returned after many back and forth stints with jobs. He has finally become a regular high school substitute teacher (despite a head injury that has made any work difficult). Most recently, he has discovered a new calling as Santa for a good-sized mall in California.  Meanwhile, Sybil has been able to maintain a series of part-time jobs (now full-time and permanent) that has allowed the family to achieve stability although their accumulated debt remains a constant cloud dodging their forward moving steps. She too relies on her talent as a singer and actress to elevate herself and her family. Both Goddrick and Sybil have strong identities apart from traditional jobs. The whole family works every summer now at a local Renaissance Festival; where Sybil is a primary singing character, Goddrick runs the sound system for the joust, and their boys act as squires for the jousting with one who wears a costume as a 10 foot tall, smiling King!

These stories, to me, make one thing very clear about the un- and underemployed. As they might proclaim collectively, “We Are Not Lazy!”

************

Please feel free to share your insights and responses to these stories in the Comments box below. To share YOUR story, please submit it any time!

Sources of ‘New Hope’ with Unemployment

The image above showing the word UNEMPLOYMENT “between the cracks” or in the margins between torn pages is quite appropriate to the experience of joblessness and underemployment. Unemployment involves a “rite of passage” in the sense of losing an identity and needing to construct or achieve a new one. The transitional ‘passage’ people must undergo with this life crisis event involves what anthropologists or sociologists would call LIMINALITY, which is simply the feeling of being “betwixt and between” (in Victor Turner’s terms): no longer in your original status or role (or, job), but in a sort of limbo zone of adjusting and trying to form a new social identity, and/or obtain a new job.

Today I will list some writing or reflection prompts that can relate to a Better Endings approach to this week’s topic of Unemployment. I do not mean to express any denial regarding the dire situation, frustrations, and anxiety; the ‘down’ side of this difficult passage affecting so many people in the world today. Better Endings as a universal, hopeful principle suggests we can still find or look for silver linings, even in the heaviest of clouds, and this is what we discovered most of the people who shared their unemployment stories with us for the Colorado Springs Tell Your Story project were often able and wanting to do. They told us of their plight and concerns, but many also shared their STRATEGIES for coping, for seeking new positions, and for thriving while outside the workforce. Many pointed out how unfortunate it is that when we first meet someone in today’s urbane society, our introductory query is likely to be, “What do you DO?”; as though what we do to earn an income defines who we ARE as a human being. Many people who are un- or underemployed must learn adaptive and often very creative ways to REDEFINE themselves while they are ‘between and betwixt’ more structured roles in society. So yes, even unemployment can have a positive, fruitful aspect; it can present a time of adjustment that is ripe with possibilities.

The Tell Your Story participants shared the following ideas and strategies as ways they have coped with or adapted to being jobless or underemployed. I invite you to share YOUR story, too, either in the Comments box below, or you can submit your story to share with readers. Or, you might wish to journal, talk about, or actively contemplate one or more of these adaptive ideas. Even if you are NOT un- or underemployed yourself, some of these strategies might still inspire or be of benefit to you. How so?

Some Better Endings Prompts for Unemployment or Underemployment:

• Redefining yourself
• Entrepreneurial opportunities
• Community non-profit support programs
• Volunteering
• Returning to or learning new hobbies, arts, musical instruments, sports, or exercise programs
• Education grants/ retraining programs
• Living with and providing household services for friends or extended family
• Workforce center services and programs
• Social Security Disability qualification
• Early retirement or pension programs
• Community Bartering or self-help networks (e.g. Family Independence Initiative; Fixing the Future programs)
• Shelters & Food banks
• Creative activities
• Networking

Unemployment Better Endings

The numbers of unemployed people around the world today is unprecedented in modern Western society. Official joblessness rates are just part of the real statistics. In the US since the 2008 Great Recession, many tens of thousands who lost jobs due to workforce downsizing and outsourcing have never recovered the jobs they were in and they have either had to go back to school for new jobs, often less desirable ones or part-time work, or they have left the workforce altogether so that they no longer show up on the unemployment records.

In 2009-2010, I formed a team of anthropology students to conduct an interview study in Colorado Springs, Colorado that we called the Tell Your Story project. We talked with people at the local workforce center and other people we knew, about their life experiences dealing with unemployment. We were not surprised to hear of much of their frustration and, for too many, despair. We were somewhat surprised to learn, though, that about a third of the people we talked with who had been out of work or underemployed for over a year and a half already had been finding new sources of support and what we came to call ‘New Hope’ even apart from the workplace. Many of these people were reinventing themselves in some very adaptive, meaningful ways. At the same time there were at least an equal number of people who had fallen into hopelessness, and for some of these persons, foreclosure or even  homelessness.

This week, Better Endings is dedicated to those who are still or have been jobless or underemployed. I will post some of what people shared in the Tell Your Story project which they were hoping would be heard by others. Certainly, many unemployed persons would not claim “better endings” as they are struggling day to day to survive and to adapt. Our hearts go out to those who might feel invisible. When we asked people how they felt people in society overall think about those who are unemployed, almost to a person the answer we received was: “That We Are Lazy”. Yet that was far from the truth. Most people we talked with were investing more than full-time hours seeking new jobs, retraining, or working part-time jobs while retooling to re-enter the workplace. And some were developing entrepreneurial approaches, or returning to arts and hobbies.

If you have a story you would like to share on the topic of unemployment or underemployment this week, please do! You can send your insights and stories via the Comments box below or submit your stories to me directly and I will certainly share them. (See the Better Endings Quotes below (bottom panel) all week for some Tell Your Story voices.)

Better Endings to You! – Linda