What a Year This Has Been!

Happy Anniversary! Yep, its been one year since I joined the ranks of the unemployed! And what a year it has been! To be part of America's best kept secret--that at least 10 percent of her working population is NOT--and that perhaps another 7-10% have given up looking for work completely.

I say secret because this is a topic no one really wants to face--not even the President of the United States until rather recently. Only when Democratic Senate seats started dropping like flies did BH Obama decide that oh, maybe, I should concentrate a bit more on the unemployed than on my close personal financiers, I mean friends, Tim Geithner and the folks he introduced me to at Goldman Sachs.

You really don't hear much talk about the unemployed even though it is such a major societal problem. You hear more about Sandra Bullock being (maybe) cheated on by Jesse James or the latest hijincks from Congressman Massa (has that news cycle not yet passed?). Working people don't want to talk about unemployment especially to the unemployed....why? They are probably deathly afraid that they will be next or pissed that they can't complain to their unemployed friends about how bad things are at work. How can they expect to get any type of sympathy.

But getting the boot from one's company (in my case from a place where I loyally worked for nearly 30 years in a senior management and highly public) and facing this lousy employment market can take its toll. It has been an interesting time to say the least--an opportunity to learn, to get frustrated, to witness classic American stupidity in action and I hope to ultimately grow. Its not been easy--but as the great Elaine Stritch sang the other night at Stephen Sondheim's 80th birthday concert (which I was fortunate enough to be able to attend), "I'm Still Here."