Are you unemployed; if so, how does it affect you?

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I know those ordeals well... I lived in the boonies, atop a mountain as described for a few years, and before that I lived in Amish country, Ohio.... good times. Horse and buggies were slightly more numerous than cars, out that far. I used to shop at a little hut of an Amish store staffed by a cute Amish gal who never said more than two words to me.

The amenities of civilization aren't much use without an income, though. Even with one, I'm not sure the increased stress of car horns, concrete, car exhaust and rude people balance out with the benefits. Plus, I miss randomly receiving Amish bread from slightly less nervous Amish neighbors...


Yeah, that can be a problem, too. That's why I've always preferred slow jobs, or at least, jobs with a steady flow... it's easy enough to adapt to something with a constant pace.

low income is the main reason i live out here, the cost of living is a lot less than in the city or burbs even. 25 cent cans of food are generally not available in the city. the taxes are low out here also, at least for my tin can on its little splinter of land. the water quality leaves something to be desired, though.

i've seldom had the privilege of having a nice slow job. that was generally way above my pay grade. it takes a shingle or several before one qualifies to land such jobs.

It seems the opposite, where I am. I know in a few small humdrum towns nearby, I could probably swing renting an apartment, but the economic and social costs would probably screw me up after a while. Don't know about any other alternatives except buying property, and I know I can't afford that.



You'd be surprised... When I lived in North Carolina, I held a job as a quality inspector at a plastics plant -- 12 hour nights on swing shifts and it was so laid back some of the employees would just sleep at their posts. I never did, but I liked the work... looking for deviations from good output parts is engrossing and doesn't require a rush... you can do it in your own time without hurting production. I had zero experience when I got hired. Problem is, the manufacturing base in America seems to be vanishing, so those jobs are getting fewer and fewer.

even when i was working i never made enough to make rent even in an efficiency apt. in my hometown of tacoma, where the minimum rents hover around the $1k level [even for a dump in the worst parts of town]. so i had to scrimp and save while caretaking for my parents when they were alive] before i had enough to move away to cheapskateland and pay for my little place out among the smogberry trees and yahoos.

that sounds like the kind of job i would like to have. my last job before shrub laid me [and several thousand other civil servants] off, was a 7p-3a shift doing coding/transcription for a gov't hospital, that was much to my liking but like everything else good in my life, it had a nearby expiration date. anyways, out here there are no jobs to be had. there is a lot of unadvertised homelessness out here, people living under bridges and in parks and such. every year they find people frozen to death. at least in the city there are warmer places for homeless people to seek refuge.

That's probably something I'm going to have to start looking into - picking up a cheap parcel of land somewhere to squat on. I just need some kind of constant employment before I can start planning that far ahead. Living with relatives is making me crazy.



Homeless shelters fill up fast... a friend and I got this notion that we wanted to go around doing random charity for homeless folks we saw panhandling, and it turns out, a lot of the homeless in the cities do the same sort of thing because they don't have many other options. The only real difference is that in the cities, there are these stupid loitering laws that push homeless people to the fringes where nobody notices them. They're like coyotes -- we have a huge coyote population in the suburbs where I live, but when you mention this to most folks around here, they're shocked because they never see the coyotes.

Consequently, before landing that manufacturing gig, I was sleeping in my car for a number of months doing day-labor whenever I could... it's weird that I'd consider doing that kind of work again. If I only had an unexpired set of license plates, that is. Everything has to cost money.

i have a relative whose voice would peel paint. be glad you aren't living with THAT. anyways, there are isolated parcels of land here and there, but even out here they are no longer cheap- there is a place nextdoor to me with insufficient frontage for any real property construction- a park-model trailer with engineered septic would be the only thing that would conceivably fit on it, as the sliver of land is barely 35' wide. the bank wants $20k for it. it [thank god, as i don't want that close a neighbor] has sat for 5 years so far, with no takers. but i would make an exception for YOU as a fellow WPer

there are coyotes for sure where i live, i see severed cat's heads now and then- i guess coyotes don't want to go through the trouble of biting open the skulls and eating the brains. even coyotes have their standards. you are a stronger person than me, i lived in my car on separate occasions but not longer than a few days, and that made me slightly crazy. it is a crying shame that everything has to have a relatively steep price tag on it.

You should meet my sister...


Beats sleeping in a tent or something similar... one of my uncles in Florida actually lived in a trailer like that on the border of the everglades... he had a cockatoo that he kept in a cage on the "porch" and the creature drove me insane whenever I had to visit.

If I only had $20k, I might actually take you up on that... and not keep a cockatoo as a pet. I only have two very quiet indoor kitties, and that's about all I can keep up with.


I actually saw one of the suburban/urban coyotes a while back, walking home from the store at night... he was crossing a train track near my house and it was one of the weirdest wildlife encounters I've ever had. Once I got home, I did some research and found that some naturalists at OSU have been tracking coyotes in Chicago, and there's a similar population in the city I live in. I was coyote-obsessed for a few months after that and I think everyone around me was annoyed by it. I just couldn't understand why they didn't find it interesting that coyotes were living in the suburbs.

When I was living in my car, I don't think it was strength so much as youthful stupidity... If I had lived in my car during the winter months, I probably would have died from an abject lack of forethought.

Of course, I had a scenic view (I stayed just off the Blue Ridge Parkway near Pisgah National Forest; that place is absolutely gorgeous) and I've always liked camping. My diet at the time left a lot to be desired... lots of canned tuna and tomatoes, no forks and no can opener... I had a bunch of books, though. That was the most stupid, fun time of my life.

yes, this is a female relative also. she has the most jackhammer/siren-intense voice i'd ever heard, it is at a pitch range that just drills through my skull.

i'm sure you'd be a good neighbor

i had to rescue a cat from a coyote once, i had to go out and shoo it away. the cat cowered atop the rain gutter.

mine was strictly due to lack of fundage, and it was cold. at least i know now that i could off myself that way, when the time comes.

just wondering, how did you open the canned tuna sans opener? with a p38 or sharp knife? and tomatoes contain lycopene, which if cooked is very good for you.

My last employers got rid of me because I was off sick. I don't think I cared at the time and since then I have been writing fiction and have come up with a couple of books though I don't think they are good enough to send to an editor or agent yet. I am going to keep writing and tolerate not having a job. I have a good resume but I now have to explain an 18 month gap which seems to be the biggest problems when recruiters call me.

Sorry, felt like we were derailing the thread, but I'll leave an answer for this: sharp knife and a rock until some nice transient donated a can-opener to me.

I worked for 17 months at my first-ever job, but left last July to move to the other end of the globe. Due to my visa I am still unemployed, on top of the fact I'm a foreigner with only retail experience and clear social issues. My visa says I can only work for 6 months at a time, and seeking work for the last almost 8 months has really stressed me out. All my interviews have been a flop (they feel like they go well then I hear nothing back or get told I didnt get the job within minutes of leaving... right there, another reason to not try to work at McD's), and I've been searching job sites, been seeking employment assistance from an unemployment office, checking newspapers, getting told about jobs by friends and family here... UGH! I hate it!

I miss the social environment of work. I miss my crazy coworkers at KFC, and I miss getting out of the house. My last shift in Canada was June 29th, 2011, and was a closing shift, I was an emergency replacement. I miss that sense of importance, of being the on-call girl for work, and living close enough to work that it would be maybe an hour walk. Part of my issue is not having a reason to go out; a lot of my hunting is digital or through paper, and I dropped out of college to come here, so I feel severely out of place due to lack of school, lack of work, lack of locality, and a diffability xD (I refuse to let people tell me Aspergers is a DISability, so I took on the term DIFFability to imply that "yes I'm different, but I can still do a lot of the same things as a normal person").

Sorry about ranting

Ive found that emotionally it makes me happier not working. i really cannot tolerate the people. Ive yelled at customers and employers for being idiots and not being able to control myself when i feel like im being attacked or singled out. Ive worked less than 3 years in the last 10 and never had anything longer than 2 years. of those 2 years i never worked more than 5 hours a week.
Financially its terrible, obviously. Live with parents and they hit hard times when the economy tanked and i cant help out. we live in a garage apartment and it sucks. but i would rather be living this life than have to spend even 10 minutes dealing with society.
If anything it affects any chance i have at having a relationship last. but thats not something im really concerned with. but its something my therapist is overly concerned with. but i dont bring it up, because i dont want to talk about it. I made that mistake once. lol, never again.

Ok just curious....what is it actually called if you don't have a job, aren't in school and never worked anywhere long enough to even qualify for unemployment? Or is there a word for that.

It is called being human

I'm that way. No job, no school, and only have two jobs ever. One lasted 2 weeks and one lasted 5-6 weeks.

I can't stand being unemployed. I'm sick of living with my drunkard father while my savings account slowly vanishes. I've become complacent to my failure of an existence as a coping mechanism, otherwise I would've already had a nervous breakdown by now.