After being laid off, some St. Louisans found solace online. Among them was Sebastian Deken, a former COCA employee and SLM Top Single, who started a blog reporting the details of his nine-month job search. The tags alone say it all: “being desperate,” “pizza rolls,” “woe is me.” “It was a total rupture in my life,” says Deken, who adds that patience was key. His self-deprecating posts gave us a candid look at the daily frustrations of unemployment.
January 9, 2009
“I fully appreciate the irony in me buying a website entitled incaseyouhadntnoticed
weareinaneconomiccrisishere.com on the eve of me becoming unemployed because of said economic crisis. You should also probably appreciate the irony in the fact that that $10 probably could feed me and my cats for three or four whole days…”
March 18, 2009
“Being unemployed has started making me very grumpy. Actually, it’s not the Not Having a Day Job that is annoying me, it’s the Not Being Able to Get One. I keep getting rejection letters, and every time I thank someone for their time in an email, I become more and more tempted to say “WHAT THE F? WHY DIDN’T YOU HIRE ME?!” Nevertheless, I continue to apply for jobs with a fervor and steadfastness bordering on desperation.”
July 6, 2009
“Since January 6, I have applied for 89 jobs… I have received rejection letters and phone calls on every day of the week, definitively, including Saturdays and Sundays—including one memorable Sunday-morning phone call. As of this weekend, I have also received a rejection email on a national holiday. Of the 89 jobs I have applied for, I only spoke or corresponded with an actual person in five cases. My rate of return is just under 7 percent… Ah, statistics. The terrible, dispassionate, empirical proof of my indigence.”
July 10, 2009
“Aside from my employment situation, I am still in limbo on a number of things that are making me nervous: hospital bills, extending my student-loan deferment, and whether or not I am going to qualify for extended unemployment benefits… Don’t even get me started on the student loans. I am more than happy to pay them when I feel like it was worth it for me to have taken them out in the first place, but a great education is meaningless if you’re looking for quarters on the street so you can do laundry.”
September 14, 2009
“For those of you who were still hanging on to hope: I ran out of money and couldn’t pay the bills. For those of you who are wondering how you are reading this if I couldn’t pay the bills, let me tell you: I paid the bills anyway. And I only accrued like $150 in overdraft charges. That’s not so bad, right?”
September 29, 2009
“Right now, I am in New York. Why am I in New York, you ask? I am in New York because I moved here. I moved here because I got a job here [as a billing coordinator at a corporate law firm]… Even if it’s not a glamorous job, it is employment, and it will pay me well, and I will be able to do things like purchase fancy soap again.”
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