Just Stwo

Now, that I am no longer unemployed, I feel much more comfortable sharing the details of being unemployed. I have always prided myself on being a hard working, dedicated, and passionate employee of whatever company I have worked for. Thanks to an awful economy, I was laid off from my job in February.
This was the most prestigious position I had held in my professional life thus far. I made a good salary, and had a great amount of expenses paid, including cel phone, home phone/internet, meals while working, and a whole slew of others. I felt like this was the beginning of a long and successful career with a company I was psyched to be a part of. This company even went as far as to let us know we were not going to be held responsible for our downturn, because we were doing great before things began to get tough with the economy. To paraphrase a senior officer of the company, “The economy has changed, not the performance of our staff. Therefore we can not hold you responsible and your jobs are secure” Well, two months later, I was jobless with a 2 week severance check. Pretty pathetic for a three year dedicated, passionate term of service to the company. To make things worse, in New York State, at least, regardless of how much you make, the most you can collect in unemployment benefits is $405 BEFORE taxes. I just don’t understand how they can tax your salary for unemployment, then tax your unemployment when you need it.

I tried very hard to immediately jump back into the workforce, but our company was one of the last to feel the effects of this horrible economic downturn. I found it impossible to gain employment anywhere in my specific field, and even more difficult to enter a new field where I could apply my expertise to something new. None of the job/career sites were of ANY help. The newspaper was a joke. No, I did not want to stuff envelopes from home, or make a million dollars while sitting at my computer being a spammer. I began to decline into a pretty tough bout of depression. All of the confidence I had was gone. It soon became impossible to afford rent, car payments/insurance, food, and other essentials at the same time. Thankfully I have a woman in my life, Noodles, who is quite successful and was there to soften the impact of all of this. I DID have to make quite a few sacrifices, though. I took my car off the road, since I could no longer afford both insurance and payments. It is currently sitting in a parking lot with no plates and a cover on it. Affording COBRA health insurance is a joke. Even with President Obama’s help with COBRA costs, $405 a week (before taxes) does not allow one to pay for this. At 33 years old, it is pretty depressing and intimidating to have to start from scratch.

All of this was putting quite a strain on my relationship with a wonderful woman as well. In the beginning, she was extremely supportive, but as time went on, her patience began to wear thin. I don’t think anyone who has a good job in a terrible economy, when the unemployment rate is the highest it has been, at least since the great depression, can understand that it is just near impossible to find gainful employment. I was not about to work at the supermarket or McDowell’s… yet. Noodles would work all day, and come home, stressed, to me sitting on the couch. I can understand how this would piss someone of, to say the least. I WAS spending most, if not all of my days sending resume’s and looking for work, but with no success. I had lost almost all faith in my ability to find employment, and Noodle’s faith is me was dwindling as well. This is very emasculating, to say the least. There did not seem to be a bright light at the end of this dark tunnel. There WAS one thing that was keeping me sane, though… Twitter.

I have always been a geek. I remember falling in love with the Atari 2600, the Comodore PET computers in elementary school, my first 8086 computer; pretty much anything with bells and whistles made me feel good. I don’t know why, but when it came time to go to college, I felt like a course of study and career in some form of technology would only make me resent it. I thought if I worked at a computer all day, I wouldn’t want to come home and have fun with one. Let’s chalk that up to being an immature 18year old with no real concept of life. Although I was not studying technology, I was still participating in it in my personal life with great fervor. I remember hacking telnet to get the first versions of visual internet browsing to work. I was always taking apart PCs and putting them back together. I write this to give you a little insight into my love for tech.

With all of the spare time I had, I began to really get involved in Twitter as well as other forms of social media. I saw how the content of your words could grant you, for the lack of a better word, popularity within the world I so longed to be a part of. I am so inspired by the community of people that are as enthusiastic as I am to share ideas with one another. It amazed me that with one simple 140 character post, I could have questions answered, laughs shared, opinions respected, amongst the many other things Twitter is capable of. I prided myself on amassing a nice group of followers who I did not have to coerce into following me. They seemed to enjoy my words, and I enjoyed theirs. I was gaining back the confidence I had lost from being laid off.

All of this came to a head in June 2009. Via Twitter, I heard Jeff Pulver was holding a conference about Twitter in my home town, New York. I did not have the funds to attend, so I made it my mission to petition Jeff to allow me to help out with the logistics of the conference itself. I worked the registration tables, and got the chance to interact with hundreds of people who looked at Twitter and social media the same way I did. This was a turning point for me. I now knew what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to be a real part of this movement of “The State of Now”, and bringing people closer together based on the content of their words. Being able to have a great in depth conversation with people such as Robert Scoble, Gary Vaynerchuck, Owen JJ Stone and others made me feel important once again. They are all visionaries in their field, and the fact that they would value the things I had to say made me feel like I could make a difference in social media as well. I cant say that if I were still employed at this time, I would have had this epiphany. Thank you all for making me realize that I am an important factor in the world! Thanks to Jeff and Daniel Berninger for giving me the opportunity to attend such a life changing event.

Since the 140 Characters Conference, I have been creating segments for Scott Johnson’s AppSlappy Podcast, I have finally gotten this blog off the ground (Thanks Adria!), been helping a few others (you know who you are) with their respective sites, and am in the process of launching a new video podcast/webcast in the near future. Most importantly, I gained back the feeling of confidence; the feeling that I can accomplish anything I put my mind to. With that confidence, I interviewed for a web 2.0 position at a fairly large marketing company. It took quite a while for them to get back to me, but as of yesterday, I have a new career!! Best of all, it is in the field I am most passionate about. I know I will be a success because it is exactly what I want to be doing.

I guess the point of me writing this catharsis is to help those of you out there who think that there is no hope. There IS hope. It may be hard to find, but just make sure you are focusing on what you love, not the failures and stumbles in your life. I love social media. Thanks to the 140 Characters Conference, and people like Owen, Adria, Rudolphe, Shwood, Justin, Scott, and Gary, I was able to turn things around and make something of myself once again. Find your inspiration and stick with it. Follow it until the day you die. I promise one thing… you will not have regrets, and eventually, someone will recognize your passion and reward you for it. It happened to me… it can happen to you.

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