Your Unemployed Daughter

photo credit: John Griffiths

Allow me to apologize for leaving that nacho cheese post up front and center for so long. It’s true, I’ve been giving myself a little break on weekends. I mean, you get a rest day in your workout week, so what about your blogging week? And sometimes I just need to give my brain a little space. It gets tired too, you know.

Speaking of tired, today I spent the day working at a sample sale. This one, to be exact. I sorted clothes, put them in boxes according to size, emptied huge duffels of their contents and arranged those contents in pleasing, purchase-convincing arrangements. And then I did math, too. I calculated people’s bills, and ran their credit cards through the credit-card machine, and … you know what’s weird? It was sort of fun.

Read the rest of this entry »

I was reminded by a former coworker that yesterday was the one-year anniversary of our dear old departed mag folding.

I remember that day fairly vividly: the confusion when my direct deposit paycheck didn’t go into my account (once in the office we were handed “live checks” by the suits who came to deliver the bad news); my anger that once again the bigwigs were trying to skinflint us (we’d been plagued with financial problems in that last month or three and my job had became, essentially, arguing with AP to get our freelancers paid); my heated conversation with the editor-in-chief over what he was doing to protect us…

Read the rest of this entry »

photo credit: andreac-84

It’s a sad day at the New York Times today. The announcement was made that 100 people in the newsroom (currently 1250 folks) will have to accept a buyout by the end of the year—or there will be layoffs to reach that number.

Somehow appropriately, editor Bill Keller was out sick (this whole thing would make me sick, too) and so delivered the news by email, which you can read here.

Read the rest of this entry »

© The Discarded

Not sure what to do with that pile of business cards the company had printed for you a week before your layoff? Check out The Discarded.

Michelle and Mike, cofounders of the project (they’re also, sweetly, a couple) want to humanize the “6.7 million unemployed people” statistic. As a physical representation of that number, they’re collecting the defunct business cards of as many folks as possible, and will feature those cards, along with individual people’s unemployment tales, on their website.

Read the rest of this entry »

photo credit: sarkasmo
You know that book by Cormac McCarthy—it was also a movie with, I think, Matt Damon and Penelope Cruz—yep, that’s right, All the Pretty Horses.

A lot of people love that book, including a former boss of mine who has a special place in the hearts of my family for the day in which he came into the office with a large bag of baby carrots, announced that he (a pompous, pudgy Brit who was always going on about his Extraordinary Ability visa) was “instituting a diet,” and then scoffed down the entire bag in about three minutes flat.

Oh, no, the story does not end there.

Read the rest of this entry »

photo credit: gettyam
Remember when Magazine Editor was like, the dreamiest dream job around? The one that all the rom-com characters in movies (the pretty, smart, successful ones who dressed well and had handsome boyfriends and really tricked-out day planners) were assigned?

Whatever happened to THAT? Did we writerly folks do something to deserve this “media apocalypse”? Did we fly too near the sun, in too many pairs of Christian Louboutin heels? Are editors now paying some karmic debt to society?

Shouldn’t that be Madoff’s problem?

Read the rest of this entry »