UNEMPLOYMENT WOES

It's not fun to not have a job, just FYI

I’ve been unemployed for two weeks now, and I don’t like it.

I never expected to find myself unemployed again at the age of 54, when AI searches your online job applications to weed out the Olds from ever getting a job again.

The last time I was unemployed was March 2020, and we all know why that happened. By that summer, I had a remote writing gig for a now-defunct political website, HillReporter.com (it might come back someday, but not yet).

That job paid well enough to get me off unemployment and out of the shitty suburban trash palace garden apartment complex I was living in. I moved into a secure building in Portland, Oregon, in late May 2022.

In October 2022, I got a second remote writing gig for another political website. For four and a half glorious months, I had TWO paying gigs. I had extra money after paying my rent. I could buy myself nice things. I could pay for my whole life. It was the most financially secure I had been in a decade and I was so proud of myself for being the least fucked up I’d been in forever.

If it stays like this I can move out when my lease is up in May, I thought to myself in January of this year. I could save enough for a small down payment on a house because my credit score is ROCKING.

JINX, Tara.

In February 2023, HillReporter.com cut back to one contributor who was not me. Because of an NDA I now have, I can’t discuss the other job, but let’s just say the last few months have been extra tight, with very little left over after paying rent.

As I write this on August 7, 2023, I’m waiting for the Oregon Unemployment Department to let me know what I’ll be getting from them to “live” on until I can either find another full-time gig or get my book published.

I like working. I like earning my keep. I like being paid for doing my job, but I extra especially like being paid for a job I’m good at, like writing.

I don’t want to have to go back to the service industry, something I was forced to do in 2013. I had been out of work for over three years at that point after losing my dream job as the midday DJ on KNRK in Portland, and my savings account was empty.

When I joined Twitter in 2009, a few weeks after I lost that dream gig, it was vastly different from what Elon Musk has done to it. It seemed like people were getting TV shows and book deals from a single tweet. I figured it was only a matter of time before I was discovered.

I’m still waiting, Dear Reader.

I’ve been watching plenty of other women I know in Portland who write things get published, get film and TV deals, and get award nominations for the people who act in their TV and films.

I just get trolled by Trump supporters.

For the last decade, my life has been the financial version of the Bataan Death March. I eventually lost my house in 2017 and moved into the aforementioned trash palace while rebuilding myself. The only steady work I could find was as a restaurant host, and while I did my best to make the most of it, it was thankless work.

I’ve been occasionally lucky, like when I landed a featured background extra gig on the TV show Grimm, which filmed in Portland for six years. It helped supplement the meager pittance I scraped together working in restaurants.

It was demoralizing to go from being “Tara from 94/7 Alternative Portland” to being “Tara at the front desk.” It was soul-crushing to be recognized by former listeners while seating them at brunch. The burnout from the body-breaking work was often so overwhelming that I felt like I lived under a heavy black blanket where no joy could find me.

My sons were 10 and 6 when I lost my job on the radio. My sons watched me try and fail to get back to my former station in life. My sons saw me come home dirty, exhausted, broken, and broke. My sons saw me at my worst and there are things they still don’t know because they’re too hard to tell them.

But I never once gave up trying to make things better for myself, and therefore for them as well. I don’t have the luxury of quitting because I don’t have a partner to lean on when my resources are depleted.

And so for ten years—TEN! YEARS! OF! MY! LIFE!—I sucked it up. I went from having my dream job to a nightmare of a life.

I went from hanging out with rock stars to getting screamed at by one of my bosses (a former friend!) because she was a verbally abusive asshole.

I went from having a free car, a free phone, free meals, free concerts, and all kinds of other awesome perks I never took for granted to getting my water shut off because I couldn’t pay the bill.

I went from everything to nothing.

And then I managed to scrape myself from the bottom of a well of depression to somehow make the rent every month.

And then I managed to land not one, but TWO gigs I could do from home that were so perfectly suited to my talents.

While that was going on, I was polishing my book, which is what this whole blog is really about. I’m the only one advocating for me. What’s hilarious to me is that my tweets about politics get great engagement, but most of my tweets about my book get crickets.

Thanks for nothing whatsoever, Elon.

Now I’m back to floundering this badly financially, I have to redirect my energy into figuring out how to stay in this apartment and continue to keep feeding myself and my cats.

I genuinely never expected to ever be back here. I never once thought I’d have to go back to filing for unemployment and SNAP benefits because I thought I’d be further along in adulting by now.

I know what I have. My book has commercial potential like what. Cameron Crowe gave me an evergreen blurb. It’s the ultimate fanfiction thanks to the Dave Grohl origin story.

Movies and limited series about music are having a little moment thanks to projects like Daisy Jones and The Six. I can see the book cover for The Sound of Settling in my head. I can see and hear the movie trailer and entire scenes. I know who I want to cast in a few specific roles (Tommy is solidly set in my mind, but you’d never guess who it is in a bazillion years) while knowing exactly what I want Grady and Lila to look like.

I have visualized an entire montage set to a gem of a mid-2000s one-hit wonder everyone has forgotten about, and it is so beyond perfect it makes me want to scream in full frustration that it isn’t already real.

I have a playlist on my phone for the soundtrack. It’s so good because it was curated by a former radio DJ who remembers exactly what the early 2000s sounded like because that’s when I was on the radio.

If you’re still reading this, I bet you’ve already thought Why doesn’t she just do a podcast?

I have before. And I’m a great podcast guest. And I guess I’ll look into doing one even though everyone and their grandmother has a podcast because no one believes me when I say terrestrial radio can still be effective if it’s live and locally focused.

But I’ll never give up on believing that the right person is out there who’ll say yes to being my agent. Yes to publishing me. Yes to adapting my book to the screen. Yes to publishing other books that I know are in me but have yet to be written. I need all of the YES after so many years of the NO.

I have other stories in me. I have so much to offer. I just don’t want my next chapter to be spent on my feet.

Thank you for being here. Thank you for reading this. Extra thank you to those who have paid to be here. Until someone pays me to write about politics, I might blow off some brain steam about all of the MAGA mishegoss here instead.

As they like to say here in Portland, let’s just see what happens.