Homeless, Not Hopeless

Sometime between Wednesday the 7th of this year (2009) and Monday the 12th I will officailly become homeless.

I've been unemployed since the 30th of January 2008. I am no longer even even that. As of August, I have exhausted all the benefits the government believes they can see fit to provide persons like myself.

We have paid into the system for all of our employed lives, even had to set aside what little money we received in march to pay our taxes out of the benefits we received. And once we are dropped off roles, the unemployment levels will not even count that we are out there.

As you can see below, I was attempting to become self-sufficient, but when you only get $249/wk and your rent is nearly $600/mo., there is not much left to build a business with. Even drop shipping was not a productive solution. I had to take my website down after three months as I had run out of funds to keep it open.

I was still applying for jobs during this time but all I would get as a reply (if anything at all) to my 3-6 applications/wk was often an email 2-3 months later stating they'd filled the job but would keep my application on file.

Things started picking up over the last three months. I got my first two interviews. One in June for a job in a start up division for $10.00/hr and no benefits. (And I'd have taken it, too.) I was in a second interview that day with the general manager and they said they'd call me the next week or the week after. I actually thought I had that one.

The next one was two weeks after I applied just last month. It was for a Bakery Trainee. I was to meet the bakery owner at his store in the evening and talk about the job after a presentation about Kangen Water. After the hour and a half presentation he met with the 3 people who were there primarily for the job.

I was the second to go outside the store with him and talk about the job. He was highly distracted with the presentation people packing up and leaving and him giving out the water. The interview was very disjointed and he seemed not to be very interested in filling the job he was offering. He told me to call him the next day, which I did. He never called back. I suspect that my main importance for him was that I was just filling a chair for his presentation that night.

So, with no safety net to keep my rent paid and basic bills, I find myself moving out with, as Dylan sang,

How does it feel?

To be on your own

With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

I paid for another week which ends after the 7th and I may extend my stay until the 12th by having those days taken out of my security deposit. I have been spending the last week or so getting all the things I own ready to put into storage. Storage that I will have difficulty paying for very quickly.

I got my old tent out today and tested it out for my dog and myself. It needs to be washed as it had motor oil spill on it when I had it stored in the lock box of my old Toyota pickup.

I'm listing the minutia of my preparation for homelessness, not to relay some sad story, but to document what is going on with me and perhaps a multitude of others.

For you see...I have a plan.

I am an optimist by nature.

A favorite folk singer of mine, Slaid Cleaves, has a song called One Good Year

Just give me One Good Year
To get my feet back on the ground
I’ve been chasing grace
Grace ain’t so easily found
One bad hand can devil a man,
Chase him and carry him down
I’ve got to get out of here,
Just give me One Good Year

[watch/hear it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mz0fDFRwTs ]

[Lyrics here: http://www.lyricstime.com/30-odd-foot-of-grunts-one-good-year-lyrics.html ]

And so, My plan, If I can arrange it, is to travel the contiguous 48 states and DC over the next year, 48 states in 50 or so weeks. Doing what Steinbeck attempted to do in his Travels with Charlie. And gathering along the way interviews and stories from people in each state an oral history of how and how we are today as a country much like Studs Terkel did in his Hard Times and Working books.

I am hoping to be surprised. I am hoping to be inspired.

More on my plan another day.