“Unemployment.”

It’s the word Sergeant Munch writes in the center of the whiteboard, strategically placed in the middle of the squad room. All the other detectives stand around staring at it in rapt attention, notebooks at the ready. He then circles the word, and draws lines that radiate out in all directions. At the end of each line, he writes the words “depression,” “anxiety,” “fear,” “loneliness,” “failure” and “broke.” He circles those words also.

The camera now focuses in tightly on Detective Benson, sporting her 16th different hairdo of the season. With one raised brow and staring that thousand yard stare, our Detective Benson, speaking to no one in particular in that whispery, mannish voice of hers says, “We’ve got a serial killer on our hands.” Then, Detective Stabler (showing us his entire range of emotions) crosses both eyes and purses his lips. “Let’s just go kill the sonofabitch. You know I need to kill someone,” he responds in his stoic yet ever so slightly psychotic manner. In the end, Fin mutters something unintelligible, because (finally acknowledging the elephant in the room) Ice-T simply cannot act, and Captain Cragen, still refusing to accept his failures as a Captain and a man, shouts, “Fine. Just do it by the book or we’ll have I.A.B. up all our asses!”

Class dismissed.

Sorry for the T.V. reference, but if you think about it, it’s apt.

If you are, or have been unemployed for a week, a month, or, God forbid, a year, that word occupies the center of your galaxy and everything in your life revolves around it. Decisions on where to go, what to do, how to do it, and why to do it, are all predicated on that one word. It is Patient Zero from which all things flow.

Damn.

That is way too much pressure for one person to handle. But I believe there is some hope, and evidently you feel it too, and that is why you are visiting these pages

This blog is designed to help you navigate through what can be the horror show of unemployment, assist you with overcoming a variety of financial obstacles, and guide you through the inevitable relationship meltdowns unemployment brings. If you stay with me you will find that I give some pretty sound advice to (at the very least) mitigate what is unquestionably a truly stressful time in your life.All that being said, let us press on with what this blog is about.

To much of the planet, you are a number on a page. You’re part of the 7.6%, or 7.7%, or whatever number they’re using at the end of each month to explain the unemployment percentages. You’re one of the 13,000,000, no, wait, you have to add in the underemployed, so now you’re part of the 17,000,000, no, wait, you have to add in the numbers of folks that have completely stopped looking for work altogether, so now you’re part of the 20,000,000 unemployed. And on and on and on.

Numbers on a page.

Look at it for yourself. Whether it’s Fox News, MSNBC, or CNN. Turn them on, and when the time comes for them to talk about America’s unemployed, you are simply reduced to numbers. Rarely does anyone, in detail, ever truly focus on what unemployment means.

“Yes,” you say to your TV. “I know you know what unemployment is, Mr. Hannity, but do you really know what it means? Because I sure as hell do.” He, of course, doesn’t. He, like so many others, twirls his little pen, admires his perfectly coiffed hair, and looks completely dumbfounded that anyone would be so naive, so silly, so wasteful, so un-American, as to extend the unemployment benefits for another year.

So what is unemployment, anyway?

 

• It is the fact that almost 25,000,000 families have had their homes foreclosed upon since 2007.
• Over 2,000,000 families were foreclosed on in 2012 alone.
• Many of the 18,000,000 displaced families are living in cheap motels, with family, or in their cars.
• Recent studies have indicated that there is a strong correlation between significant increases in child abuse and local mortgage foreclosures.
• Just a 1% rise in unemployment was accompanied by a roughly 1% increase in suicide in the U.S. This also true in Greece, Spain, and Italy.
• The rates of suicides between 2008 and 2010 rose 4 times faster than it did in the 8 years before the recession.
• In a recent survey of law enforcement agencies across the country that polled 700 agencies, 56% of them said that in 2011 the bad economy had caused an increase in domestic conflict. A similar survey found that that number was at 40% in 2010.

Now, those facts, as interesting as they may be, explain only what unemployment is, not what it means.

Let’s not confuse the two.  

Just a short time ago, you may have been regarded as a productive member of society, a “really good person.” You were someone who could always be counted on. Someone who mattered. Now, because you find yourself jobless, you may not be held in such high esteem. That’s part of what unemployment means.

It also means a lot of unwanted emotions are now your best friends (like teenage acne) who

never, ever leave your side. Emotions like humiliation, loneliness, emptiness, the feeling of failure, desperation, and the fear of just about everyone and everything.

And it brings the one searing question that is always in the back of your head: “How in the hell am I going to make it through until tomorrow?”   

Those emotions, and so many others are included in what unemployment means. And honestly, how many times do we get to sit down with anyone, and I mean anyone, and really talk about that part of being unemployed? Rarely, if ever.

We simply just never get it out.

And all you want, all you need is to get back to that place you once were and leave all this nonsense behind. I often wonder why most of us don’t completely just jump out of our skins. After all, no matter how busy, or how much pressure you were under when you used to be down at the office, it can’t compare to the pressures of being unemployed.

But there is hope. There are solutions. You can survive this. 

My advice? Stay with me.