I hope I didn't bore anyone reading this in my first post. I felt that I needed to get off who I was and where I had been off my chest before going onto the next part of my life. The present.
At present, I am unemployed and have been so for just shy of a month. I have little savings, due to the poor timing with which I got fired and the fact that it has not been so long since I've graduated college. I'm signed up for a work program and am waiting for them to place me. I've applied everywhere - research assistant jobs, pizza delivery jobs, even a job at Burger King. So far, nothing. In fact I almost got a job today, but screwed it up - more on that later.
My bank account went negative today - I asked my car insurance to send me a paper bill, which I hoped to pay via some other means in the near future rather than have it draw from my bank account, but apparently it takes a few days to process this change. They're willing to send me a check, but that does little good.
That means, aside from around fifteen dollars or so I have lying around my house, that I am officially broke. I suppose this is freeing in some way - that was the bill I was worried most about and it, one way or another, is solved.
I do have some good news - apparently my tax refund will be around $1100. The bad news? I'm going to have to wait at least four weeks for it. My mother apparently claimed me as a dependent when I wasn't one, so instead of the week long wait I expected, I will instead have a month long wait while they sort things out.
Now, onto the worst news of today -
I got a callback about a job today, from Quickenloans. Now granted, from what I've been reading on this job - it would be quite hellish. Long hours and most of the money being commission. I talked to the recruiting agent, and we discussed the two positions I applied for in the company - Mortgage Banker (Commissions) and Licensing Specialist Intern (Operations, he said). He said only the first was commissions based, and me, thinking that I would rather have the non-commission based job and have an actual internship - said I wanted to apply for the internship. Apparently he was only a recruiter for the sales and commissions side, which has by far the more openings. So I lost out on what could have at least been a decent paying (if harsh) job.
That's fine.
It only makes my mind up further that I am going to probably have to leave this place. When I mentioned to my mother my fear of losing my apartment and car - she said that I could still live with my uncle and try to rebuild my life that way. I'm just not willing to stay in a place where I will be reduced to working a minimum wage job within walking distance. Perhaps call me selfish - but I am entirely unwilling to stay in a region where according to U-6 figures, has something like 24% un/underemployment. I will post a link to this analysis later, in my comments section.
I cannot think of the desire to escape this area as being ungrateful, stuck up or anything. I feel (and with student loans to some extent, I feel I need) a better paying job. I went to college for a reason. I will take any job offered to me, without fail, at least for money - but ultimately I feel that I am better prepared for a different sort of life than working at Burger King.
I'm getting in contact with people I know across the country, to find out where the best places to move are or who might be able to get me a job. Thus far, results have been rather negative about it. Everyone says their area is rather hard hit, though I am assuming most regions are less hard hit than Michigan.
Current top choices for where to move are: New York City, Seattle, Portland, Washington D.C., and Boston in that order. I'm willing to go anywhere, but those are the real big ones I am considering. I'm also not averse to California, but from what I hear - California has it almost as bad as Michigan.
Oh well. I will survive and flourish, no matter what happens.
Afterall, I have a new suit and I look sharp in it. Nothing can stop a man in a suit.
P.S. This is the link to the article
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/6/9/740586/-EconPop-Series-(3)-23.4-Unemployment-in-Michigan
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Friday, June 5, 2009
In the Beginning
This is a blog I'm writing to describe my life as it is currently. I figure that rather than a journal, I will instead put up a blog so that anyone who can get any part or portion of enlightenment from my story will do so. I don't know that this blog will help anyone other than me (or even me, honestly) but that is my goal here. I'm ambitious and one way or another I will survive. I intend to document my success or failure here, in this blog. Maybe I'll not dedicate time to this - maybe I'll be a prolific writer on the subject. I don't know. I'll do what little I can and no matter what, at least my struggles will be given testimony here.
- Andrew Alexander, June 5th, 2009
A bit of past history:
I grew up poor. Very, very poor. Perhaps I was better off in some ways than other children. My mother was overprotective. I was not allowed to leave the house - socialize or anything. I didn't get free until I moved to college when I was eighteen. My home environment was still horrid. My step-father was a crack addict, I was oftentimes homeless (humorous story on that later). In some ways, this has severely crippled me over the years. In other ways, I think it saved me. I did not do drugs, alcohol or engage in any extremely risky behaviors.
This environment led me to realize two things: Life can sometimes be shitty - and you have to deal with that one way or another. You can't ultimately let it get you down - you can't bow out (God, I sound like a motivational poster!) and that academic study, an education, was the only thing that would keep me from the same fate.
I went to college. That was when my life began. I had my first real girlfriend, I met my first real long term friends. It was a small midwestern college - I attended because it was cheap and my GPA was horrible. I suffered through a bout of depression my Junior year of High School, and the instability of other years made it so that I felt I had no chance of getting into a better school (I was wrong, but that is besides the point). I stayed at that college, and changed majors twice. All in all I ended up doing five years before I had some idea what I wanted to do. Familial pressure didn't help. In my family, college was associated with liberalism and communism.
I graduated, still relatively sheltered. I had never had anyone teach me how to drive, I had only worked for a year - my family encouraged me not to, saying that I would be working for the rest of my life. Overall, while I was educated in books, I was still growing in life knowledge.
I realized that I was behind the curve in many ways. I begged, borrowed and paid off friends to let me use their cars. I had them teach me to drive enough to pass my test, bought a car with what little money I could and practiced. I got a job as a delivery driver for a Dominos Pizza. That was my driving school.
I applied for other jobs, but none came through. I kept working at Dominos, planning on applying for graduate school in the late fall/early winter of 2008. Plans would work out otherwise. The car I bought first (from my sister no less), started to have brake problems. I paid for them to be fixed with a registered but non-shop mechanic (I was dirt poor). He did a very poor job, and I got into a car crash - destroying the car. I had to buy an entirely new one, financed. That destroyed my goal of applying for graduate school in 2008.
So I kept working at Dominos for months and months. While a pizza delivery job may not be very glamorous, it does pay fairly well - especially compared to what I was used to. I kept working at Dominos, saving up some money (but mostly my car payment, insurance and rent ate most of it). I did occasionally spend money on some things. Dinner out, I took very cheap trips (under $60 to Washington D.C., and under $200 to New York City - note that is total cost of the trips for each)
In April of 2009, my then boss at Dominos' uncle died. He was asked, by his aunt, to take over her store. The management above him decided to bring in a new manager who tended to be corrupt. He began firing employees every couple of weeks for made up infractions. They were only the employees he didn't like. I was told I was on the list to be fired the day I got back from New York City, if I didn't ship up. Already being a hard worker (as attested by every other manager there) I worked even harder. But he had hired five new drivers (as summer began and our workload decreased) and like three other individuals before me, I too got fired.
That is my backstory.
- Andrew Alexander, June 5th, 2009
A bit of past history:
I grew up poor. Very, very poor. Perhaps I was better off in some ways than other children. My mother was overprotective. I was not allowed to leave the house - socialize or anything. I didn't get free until I moved to college when I was eighteen. My home environment was still horrid. My step-father was a crack addict, I was oftentimes homeless (humorous story on that later). In some ways, this has severely crippled me over the years. In other ways, I think it saved me. I did not do drugs, alcohol or engage in any extremely risky behaviors.
This environment led me to realize two things: Life can sometimes be shitty - and you have to deal with that one way or another. You can't ultimately let it get you down - you can't bow out (God, I sound like a motivational poster!) and that academic study, an education, was the only thing that would keep me from the same fate.
I went to college. That was when my life began. I had my first real girlfriend, I met my first real long term friends. It was a small midwestern college - I attended because it was cheap and my GPA was horrible. I suffered through a bout of depression my Junior year of High School, and the instability of other years made it so that I felt I had no chance of getting into a better school (I was wrong, but that is besides the point). I stayed at that college, and changed majors twice. All in all I ended up doing five years before I had some idea what I wanted to do. Familial pressure didn't help. In my family, college was associated with liberalism and communism.
I graduated, still relatively sheltered. I had never had anyone teach me how to drive, I had only worked for a year - my family encouraged me not to, saying that I would be working for the rest of my life. Overall, while I was educated in books, I was still growing in life knowledge.
I realized that I was behind the curve in many ways. I begged, borrowed and paid off friends to let me use their cars. I had them teach me to drive enough to pass my test, bought a car with what little money I could and practiced. I got a job as a delivery driver for a Dominos Pizza. That was my driving school.
I applied for other jobs, but none came through. I kept working at Dominos, planning on applying for graduate school in the late fall/early winter of 2008. Plans would work out otherwise. The car I bought first (from my sister no less), started to have brake problems. I paid for them to be fixed with a registered but non-shop mechanic (I was dirt poor). He did a very poor job, and I got into a car crash - destroying the car. I had to buy an entirely new one, financed. That destroyed my goal of applying for graduate school in 2008.
So I kept working at Dominos for months and months. While a pizza delivery job may not be very glamorous, it does pay fairly well - especially compared to what I was used to. I kept working at Dominos, saving up some money (but mostly my car payment, insurance and rent ate most of it). I did occasionally spend money on some things. Dinner out, I took very cheap trips (under $60 to Washington D.C., and under $200 to New York City - note that is total cost of the trips for each)
In April of 2009, my then boss at Dominos' uncle died. He was asked, by his aunt, to take over her store. The management above him decided to bring in a new manager who tended to be corrupt. He began firing employees every couple of weeks for made up infractions. They were only the employees he didn't like. I was told I was on the list to be fired the day I got back from New York City, if I didn't ship up. Already being a hard worker (as attested by every other manager there) I worked even harder. But he had hired five new drivers (as summer began and our workload decreased) and like three other individuals before me, I too got fired.
That is my backstory.
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