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Top Hard Times Blogs
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Miss Pink Slip
Dyeing for a Treat? Don’t Dismiss Guilty Pleasures
In the February issue of Town & Country, Bernie Madoff victim and former Self Magazine Editor-in-Chief Alexandra Penney discusses her upcoming book, The Bag Lady Papers: The Priceless Experience of Losing It All. Essentially, one day she was wealthy; the next, she was flat broke. She had to completely alter her existence and...
Patron Saint of the Jobless: Gabourey Sidibe
I haven’t posted a Patron Saint in a while, but yesterday’s Oscar nominations prompted this very special one for me. While not technically unemployed (she was a student at Mercy College), this 26-year old had never acted professionally. That is, until Director Lee Daniels came along auditioning for “Precious” Jones, the...
Pink Pick – 100 Motivational Blog Posts for the Unemployed
http://www.psychologydegree.net/2009/07/08/100-motivational-blog-posts-for-the-unemployed/ ...
Update: Groundhog Sees Shadow, Screws Up My Day
Thanks, Punxsutawney Phil. Thanks for ruining my day with the news of six more weeks of winter. ...
Happy Groundhog Day! Does Punxsutawney Phil Have The Best Job in the World?
Will we have six more weeks of winter? Only minutes will tell. Punxsutawney Phil– and his doppelgängers throughout the country (General Beauregard Lee in Georgia) – might just have the best job available today. Who else but this legendary member of the squirrel family gets pampered in a cushy burrow and only has...
Atlanta Networking Happy Hour Feb. 17 at Tavern 99
From Jenny Jeansonne: “As many of you know I try to help the unemployed of Atlanta as much as I can. I host free networking happy hours once a month and post job leads. My next happy hour is Wed Feb 17th at Tavern 99. Please RSVP via the Evite: http://tiny.cc/ATLjobs People can find Atlanta...
WSJ.com: Laid Off And Looking
As a Temp Job Ends, Searching for a Full-Time Role
Rebuilding a network...
Pursuing a Variety of Leads During a Long Transition
Keeping the network alive...
After a seven-month search, getting back to work...
Moving Toward Economic Recovery
A new outlook on finding a job...
Guest Post: After an M.B.A., Dealing With a Sudden Layoff
Beginning the job search...
Advice: Dissecting the Hiring Process
Behind the scenes of an interview...
I Don’t Wish Unemployment on Anyone
via PostSecret But then again, I suppose there is comfort in numbers. ...
Can’t afford to eat out as much as before? Just head out to restaurants a little bit earlier. Discount dining is back in style, with several restaurants offering discounts before 6 p.m. Early bird specials are no longer just for senior citizens looking to be thrifty, but for anybody who...
Survey Says: Americans Not Happy at Work
The Conference Board research group conducted a survey that found 55 percent of Americans dissatisfied with their jobs—the highest rate in 22 years. Okay American employers: I have an assignment for you. Figure out how to make your employees happy! I promise you’ll get higher productivity! ...
May 2010 bring us more work and a better economy! ...
Yesterday Phi announced it was shutting down due to the Great Recession’s economic climate. Most of you probably don’t know of Phi, the high-end luxury label founded by Susan Dell, wife of Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell. I remember admiring Phi’s architecturally sleek, sexy and tough designs when we used a dress...
I was thinking about this just now. The last four guys I’ve dated have been underemployed or unemployed—unstable, basically—just like me. One guy was unemployed and bounced through traveling, friends’ apartments and his parents’ home; another lost his job and couldn’t pay rent; another was underemployed, doing odd jobs and...
NYT > Michael Luo
Jobless Turn to Family for Help
When unemployment leads to borrowing from family and friends, the experience can be stressful....
Struggling, and Seeking Hope in President’s Words
Don and Sheyenne Kreamer, who have to move from their foreclosed home by Sunday, stopped packing to watch the State of the Union speech....
Economists See a Lift in 2010 Census
Next year’s census will not only count people, it will also put money in millions of pockets and potentially create a well-timed economic spark....
For Many, Uncertainty, Fear and Shame Often Follow Pink Slips: Safety Net Thins As Search Persists
Debra Winchell, 50, is single with no siblings, and her mother lives in an apartment complex for the elderly. The combination leaves her feeling especially vulnerable as her quest for work persists. ''I have no place to go if things fall through,'' she said....
Lee Daves, 54, is coming to the end of his unemployment benefits and is not sure what he will do next. ''I'm going to find something soon,'' he said. ''I have to. It may not be what I want. If I have to wash dishes, that's what I'll do. Hopefully...
For Many, Uncertainty, Fear and Shame Often Follow Pink Slips
Three unemployed Americans tell their stories of uncertainty, the end of unemployment benefits and having no one to which to turn....
Stuff Unemployed People Like
#148 Claiming Their New Year’s Resolution is to Get a Job
Most well-meaning people set out to start off the new year with a clean slate, vowing to quit this or start that - anything that will make them a better person. But it’s well known that resolutions were meant to be broken so this December, all of the unemployed people...
#147 Making Something Out of Nothing for Halloween
Halloween 2008 was probably one of the final blowouts the now-unemployed had in the past year. Chances are it was the last time people had the opportunity to party hard before doomsday reports, job losses, and a massive downsizing in money and fun took over in 2009. With pitiful signs...
#146 Staring At Their Useless Diploma(s)
For generations people have fallen for that whole “work hard in school to get a good job” bull crap that is starting to sound more and more like a line of lies these days. After hitting the books and taking the smart people classes to avoid turning out like Jimmy,...
#145 Cramming in Their Health Care
With national health care being widely debated in these here United States of America, plenty of unemployed people have their own way of dealing with a lack of health insurance: cramming in as many visits and tests as possible before their coverage ends either due to a lay off, a...
#144 Ironically Celebrating Labor Day
With Labor Day over and the majority of America winding down their summers, there may have been a certain sect of people (jobless) who made employed people wish they had more than one lousy day off to celebrate their contributions to society and the economy. Having no job was hardly...
When rich kids want to look cool, they shop at thrift stores to look poor. When unemployed people want to look clothed, they shop at thrift stores so they don’t get arrested for wearing nothing but their tattered former company’s t-shirt and dirty socks. Thrift stores, “in this economy”, are...
Everyday People
Writer's Block? More Like Writer's Shutdown.
Remember when you had to write a paper for school, you knew what you were going to say but you just couldn't bring yourself to sit down and DO it? Welcome to my first non-fiction book's progress.It started with an idea, which found an interested agent, who then proposed...
You want a brief course in civil rights in America? No? Do you just want to see a truly masterful blog post? You can't do better than this:http://ruthie822.blogspot.com/Creative, compelling, informative. Bravo....
Talking about Sebastian made me eager to talk about Sam. Sebastian, if you read the earlier post, was a feisty old donkey we adopted to keep our runaway horse, Sam, closer to home.Sam's another story and he deserves his own space.The picture above isn't Sam - I don't have...
I've been on my own for going on two weeks now - KB went to a gig and expected to be home this weekend. Instead, he's going to be snowed in in North Carolina - perhaps until spring if their reputation for snow removal there lives up to its...
A Lie Is Violence Against The Mind
I don't know where that phrase came from, but I remember it struck me when I first read it. A lie creates a false reality, a papier mache world that the liar knows to be a fake. Liars creates the lie to protect themselves from discomfort; it's not...
I am gullible. I admit it. It's taken me years to realize that people often say things they don't mean. Sometimes they say things they mean at the moment and they change their minds. I honestly didn't get it. I thought when you make the...
The Unemploymentality
Getting through to the EDD: Call for Vietnamese number
Still having trouble getting through to the EDD? We've already mentioned this strategy in our 'mas popular' post tips and tricks, but if it hasn't sunk it yet, check out Rudy's video blog below on how calling the Vietnamese hotline got him his checks. Besides, although he doesn't...
TwitJobSearch: A New Way to Find Jobs?
Twitter has teamed up with TweetDeck to offer a custom desktop job search tool. For those of you who can’t imagine finding a job on the social networking service, check this out: 340,000 jobs have allegedly been posted on the site so far. The new feature is supposed to...
“One American Dream?” is a documentary exploring the American Dreams of the youth generation. As a feature length documentary, “One American Dream?” will follow my journey as I travel around the country in search of how the vision of success has changed and what the American Dreams of today’s...
Can Rain Hurt Your Interview? Freakonomics Blog Says “Maybe”
Forget economic forecasts. It’s the weather forecast you should really be watching! Well… sort of. According to two smart dudes from the University of Toronto, medical school applicants who interview on a rainy day fare ever-so-slightly worse than their sunny day counterparts (their scores were one percent lower). I don’t know if...
Oh EDD, how you make people hate thee
A California EDD computer glitch might mean 111,000 unemployed might not get unemployment checks until after christmas. ...
New Get Rich Quick Tip: Win $100k in cash & Prizes at Nikon Festival
The Nikon Festival is looking for people to submit 240 second-long videos about their lives. Do it with a little style, and you could be winning a $100k prize! The kitty for second prize isn't so bad either, $25k. Either way, that adds up to a...
Portraits of an Economy
My wife and I have been married for coming up on 16 years and have three exceptionally brilliant children (mostly her doing.) For the better part of 20 years after college I sold commercial printing in the DE, PA, NJ area and lead a successful, yet very boring career killing...
submitter's note: trigger warningI managed to score a wonderful job just as the recession hit. I am employed by a non-profit organization, and happily took a slight pay cut in order to regain a sense of personal satisfaction with my work.My non-profit assists survivors of sexual assault in various aspects...
Portrait: Prince George's County, Maryland
Last night my husband and I broke down and tapped into our very last resort. We emptied my 16 month old daughter’s piggy bank for money to sustain us for the next 10 days until our next paydays.Despite the dire straits that we might seem to be in right...
Portrait: Puyallup, Washington
My husband and I have spent our entire young adulthood making what we thought were the "right" choices. He got me through nursing school so I could get a good job and I could, in turn, get him through chiropractic school so he could get his own great job....
Portrait: Vermillion South Dakota
A few years ago, I was 22 and enjoying my own quiet riot of excess and stupidity. I was mindless about everything. Mindlessly dating and sleeping with a man that didn't love me and vice versa. Mindlessly wracking up thousands in stupid debt, living off of my mother, and just...
Portrait Update: St. Louis Missouri
You published my story on Portraits of an Economy on Mother's Day. My husband and I were in the middle of what felt like a never ending adoption limbo, waiting to find out if we could keep our daughters and sacrificing everything we could to continue channeling money at our...
Nicejob Media
My old Day to Day colleague Shereen Meraji asked me to go to the NAMM music show in Anaheim and do a story for All Things Considered, where she now works. And I was only happy to do so.It's the biggest musical instrument show in the country - maybe...
Why Be With Coco When You Can Be Coco
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Name That Spot: The Full Collection
This is a free player from embedr.com. It's little, and a little gnarly, but it does allow me to present all the Name That Spots, in order, in a not-quite-ready-for-primetime package.For old-fashioned link-by-link viewing experience, try this post....
A one minute wrap-up of the year, from a personal perspective....
Name That Spot: A Visual Puzzle
Here's a series of little diversions I've created, ostensibly for my current employer. They're locations around Los Angeles - you have to guess where. Some are easy, even if you've never been to LA. Some are a bit more challenging.Name That Spot #7AnswerName That Spot #6AnswerName That...
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Girl on the Brink: Surviving Desperate Times with Desperate Measures
For some girls, one guy is never enough. For Ann, one job is never enough. Yes, Ann is looking for extra work. While she’s thrilled to be taken off the unemployment roll, she’s got one little problem. Ann is making $20,000 less than in her last full-time job. That’s a significant drop...
Now that I got a full-time job, I can’t wait to get to work, even on the weekend. No matter! You make out of life with whatever it presents you. This weekend, good old Mother Nature presented me with snow. Not a lot but enough to sculpt visions of a better tomorrow and...
I start my new job today, after 15 months of being unemployed–the longest spell of not working, except for the time-out I took to have kids. All I can say to the employers who passed me up or never gave me the time of a phone call, here’s what you’re missing....
Day 250 — Staying Hard in Hard Times: Getting It Up at Home, Work
In my lifetime, I haven’t had sex with all that many men, although probably more than you. Now that I’m in my 50s, and the men in my life are mostly 50 and over, I find myself periodically confronted with what are euphemistically called “performance issues.” I am old enough to remember...
Day 249 — Cinderella and the Sexy Bra
Have you seen those ads claiming that four out of five American women are wearing the wrong size bra? I wondered how they knew that until I realized it must be data coming from those new magnetic scanning devices at airports. “Look, Bob, she’s obviously a 34C, but she’s wearing a 36B....
“It looks like shit, but it works,” I told my ex husband, as I turned on the kitchen faucet. That “Waterweld” stuff really works for a girl handyman job, I thought with a smug smile. Though the neck of my faucet now looks like it has a gray growth on it (Waterweld...
Bob Loblaw's Job Blog
Has Thanksgiving weekend left you feeling unsatisfied? Hungry? Are you looking for some hearty goodness? For all of you Unemploymentality fans out there (yes, I’m speaking to all 4 of you) I bring you Lyndsights My new attempt at telling my story. Still me, with a little more depth, and just as much ridiculous-ness...
Peeps, I’m asking ya’ll a favor….just as the addictive New Kids on the Block song demands, please hang tough through this hiccup in my blogging road. I know I have been silent. I know I have let you all down. But I’m in the process of some maj life decisions and am trying to discover...
It would really suck to have a name that sounded like someone famous. The co-founder of the Hover Round is named Tom Kruse. Brutal. So, I’m trying to get back into the blogging swing of things so I thought I’d share a little bite sized gem I found on Craig’s List regarding...
…it bruises easily. I know I seem super tough on the outside. Almost a Madonna-meets-Indigo Girls-meets-Demi Moore in GI Jane-tough. But really I’m just a softy. So when we were hanging around our Safari campsite and our cook Stephen made the following comment, I almost packed up and shipped myself back to...
Guys. I leave tomorrow for Kenya. My freak is totally freaked but I’m so excited. I promise to come back with more blog inspiration (blogspiration) and without a raging case of yellow fever. Or malaria. Or typhoid. Ohmygosh. If you want to follow the kenyan adventure and hear about how I’m probably making huge cultural faux pas, check out www.yeswekenya.wordpress.com Keepin...
One of the joys of living in this blessed city is the plethora of people that come visit you. From old high school friends to distant relatives to baby’s daddies (just seeing if you were paying attention), everyone and their mom (seriously, they bring their moms) makes plans to visit Chicago...
Tales From the Recently Laid Off
Cheers to the end of 2009. I don’t know about you, but that year –2009– not in my top ten for the decade or the prior 28 for that matter. I won’t begin to contemplate the future years. Woo. There’s one thing 2009 taught me, kids. Don’t be too hung-up...
Taking it to the streets: Step Up
It can happen anywhere – your desk, the movies, dinner, while you’re lying in bed – suddenly the fear creeps in. Your palms sweat and your pores ooze. The lights begin to flicker. Not again. The horror, the horror. Oh, Post-tramatic Layoff disorder (PTLD), how you taunt with your visions...
Self-actualization via the crazy
Congratulations are in order. And by that, I mean I’m going to congratulate myself. I’ve made the jump from all-out unemployment to the realm of part-time underemployment. Translation: I am wedged in between the lowest tiers of Maslow’s self-actualization pyramid! Huzzah! Still, it’s progress and I have my...
Last week, I committed the ultimate interview faux pas. I was late to a follow-up. It was scheduled for noon. East coast time. Running around at the gym, I finished up around 10 PST to see several missed calls. With voicemails. “Apparently we had...
Recently, an interview was posted on Wired.com that I did with actress Radha Mitchell. She’s currently starring in the movie Surrogates, alongside Bruce Willis, and next year will be in the remake of George Romero’s cult film The Crazies. She talked about starring in sci-fi and horror ranging from...
The former unemployed guide to wedding season
Three weddings and counting and I have another lesson in life why being unemployed, or formerly unemployed, ruins your social life. You see I was invited to five, that’s right, five weddings this year. That number is not a lie. Starting in August and running through December; I’ve made...
Broke-Ass Stuart's Goddamn Website
FREE Cal Academy Nightlife Admission on (or near) your birthday.
Both Chloe and Stuart recommended you check out the California Academy of Sciences and you should listen to both of them because it is every bit as awesome as it sounds. And for those of us that like to get a little tipsy while staring at their wide array of...
Beard Ball: Go Beard or Go Home!
The 2010 Beard Ball is a place to show off your beards, brought to you by Build-A-Beard, founded by my girl Riss and someone who goes by “El Beardo”. According to them, Build-A-Beard: …recognizes those who display a commitment to the excellence of facial hair growing whether fully maintained, trimmed daily, or...
Broke-Ass of the Week – Deven Harrison
Every week we feature a different person from the community shedding a little light on their life of brokeitude. Who knows, maybe you’ll learn something about the human spirit…probably not. Related posts:Broke-Ass of the Week – Plug1 from What I’m Seeing Every week we feature a different person from the...
Speak-up Please: Queer Community Meeting on Living, Working and Gentrification in SF
Queer? Angry? Something on your mind? Well you’re in the right town, right? Hmm, good question. Activism seems a little play nice these days. Rally! Just don’t irritate people. Um, maybe, but we still have tons of places to get wasted and trashy…. Well, that depends. You, say, can’t hang out on...
No Glove No Love: $3 Off Admission to the Museum of Sex
When my friend and I went to Copenhagen, the glowing red sign for the Museum Erotica became our landmark. Whenever we were lost, we used it to figure out which direction to go. New York’s Museum of Sex hasn’t become a compass for me, but it’s the best place to...
FREE Standup Comedy at Madrone
Yeah, I know I talk a lot about Madrone, but that’s because it’s my go-to neighborhood bar and they always keep it fresh with the DJs and events. That said, it’s the first Wednesday of the month which for many people means free museum admission, but for those of us...
Recession in America - BusinessWeek
The effects of the recession are still reverberating throughout America. But with the U.S. economy improving, other BusinessWeek blogs will continue the discussion and provide updates from the political, economic, and small business perspectives. Thank you for your readership and comments. ...
Dead Not Immune From Recession
The Poynter Institute's Al Tompkins notes this morning reports that more people are seeking government aid to pay for funerals and that unclaimed bodies are piling up at the Detroit morgue. ...
Last month, my BusinessWeek colleague Chris Palmeri blogged about withdrawing an all-cash offer for a home in Pomona, Calif., after learning that BW was being put up for sale by the McGraw-Hill Companies. I'm also feeling jittery about the prospect of losing my job, so jittery in fact that I've...
Back to School Shopping Suffering
When I was a beginning reporter, I used to do first-day-of-school stories, and one image sticks with me. It was an early September day and the temperature was in the 90s, but most of the elementary school kids lined up outside were in long sleeve shirts and fall outfits. Their...
Arena Football League Suspends Operations
Hard hits on the playing field may be one thing, but the recession has proved to be too much for the 22-year-old Arena Football League. The league, which had already canceled its 2009 season but was hoping to regroup for 2010, told its owners last night that it had been...
Like most people who grew up in the 1960s, I had music class in elementary school. I have many happy memories of singing tunes from the Up With People traveling show as well as American standards such as This Land Is Your Land by Woody Guthrie. I've written about this...
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