The Employment Quandary

Employment has been spreading like a disease amoung the people I call my community. Over the summer, it was a grand experiment in zero or minimal employment, and the results were a mixed success. (otherwise known as an unacknowledged failure) One by one, as the leaves fell from the trees, the slackers fell from the unemployment party boat.

The summer was glorious. It was the summer of the watermelon sarong and spending more time cooking over a fire than in the house. It was sunshine on the stone of the quarry, nettles on the path to the cooling creek, rust dust so thick on my skin it looked like I had more of a tan than I did. And I did have a tan. I had a wonderful, healthy glowing tan this summer. A tan like childhood summers where there was no responsibility but the pursuit of fun.

As the tan has faded and the cooling green leaves turned to their autumn glory, the grand adventure came to a close. Like fall this year, it was slow to happen. Little pieces fell away a bit at a time. One of us started working from home, the other always worked from home but then got more work to do. Another goes from part-time to full, yet another abandons the smug satisfaction of the unemployment check for sore feet and a 40% retail discount. My own mother, taking a job on a whim after 3 years of maintaining her unemployment, decided to go from temporary to permanent full time work. My own mother!

The final straw comes from having my Wednesdays stripped from me with the paltry excuse of needing to not only pay for child support and rent, but to eat as well. I find that exceedingly selfish and short sighted. He could lose a few pounds, it wouldn't hurt. Hell, it may even help his sex life. Think ahead, people!

There are more examples, but the whole thing leaves me a little queasy and slightly disdainful. Who would choose to work? Not really any of them, actually. The rock star, the mountain man, the actress, the pin-up girl, the crafter, the playboy, and me, the artist. We each have other things we'd rather be doing but working. Yet, the siren song of materialistic gain and practical comfort becomes an insistant buzz in the ear as winter approaches. Is it the season for employment? Does money become something more relevant or vital when the weather is hazardous to our health?

Even I, a hard core employmentphobe, am considering going back to work. Why? It appears that guilt, of all things, is the catalyst to spur me from my entrenched stance on an issue near and dear to my heart: Staying unemployed at all costs. Apparently, not all costs. I never in million years would have believed I could be guilted back into the monetary arena, but here it is. If others can do it, so can I. Not just that, but the responsibilities of employment stimulate me in other areas of my life the way being home all the time does not. It just about kills me to say that, but it's true.

My unemployed status has cost someone else their free time, time with their children. That galls me. I don't mind being poor. I can live with the judgement of being a slacker, even a sponge, but I can't live with the idea that because of a financial commitment to me, that person is being denied time away from work, a thing I value more highly than any reward work can offer. To add to this, a community establishment may need to close. Not really because I didn't work, but could be saved if I did. That may be a slippery slope of responsibility, but it's one that added to the first becomes an employment necessity.

And let's face it. I'm a girl who likes nice things. Poverty, while acceptable in the face of the alternative, (employment) is not exactly a prized and valued state of being in my life. So, if you can't beat them... join them. (and get paid for beating them *laughs*) So, get to work, little missy, your summer is over.