Adventures in Unemployment

In the 17 years I have spent as a working, productive member of society, this past month is the first that I have not been willfully and gainfully employed.

The first week, my shell-shocked self received optimistic visitors to my flat who insisted on the silver lining around a dark, rain-soaked cloud. The second week, I relaxed a bit, accepting that perhaps these loving friends were indeed right. As a writer of a novella with a major publisher, an accomplished editor of three magazines (two of them international), a budding photographer, and a mildly decent painter and sketcher, my creativity will surely see me through.

By week three I had started applying for full-time jobs, while also saying yes to non-paying projects that could open up my horizons and keep me productive, one of which is as the writer for a developing cooking show. But working for free won’t pay my rent.

Earlier this week a friend of mine, in a roundabout way, asked me if I was willing to take care of a mutual friend who is sick with cancer in exchange for a free, large apartment. I was hesitant. As an empathetic person, I wasn’t sure that I had the guts to watch a friend battle a vigorous and determined illness. At the same time, free lodging is something not to pass up lightly, especially in a seemingly recession-proof New York.

I mulled. I spoke and wrote to close friends about it. All of them, with varying degrees of politeness and noting my compassionate nature, told me I was crazy not to do it. I picked up the phone and called my sick friend, and older woman and a doyenne of my Brooklyn neighborhood, to arrange a meeting to discuss what exactly her needs will be.

That evening I walked the two blocks to her looming brownstone and sat with her for an hour, during which time we talked about our childhoods, writing, the evolution of Brooklyn, the beach of Barbados, old swings, and the horror of doing dishes. Finally, noting she was hunger, we both got up and I set about helping her prepare a dinner consisting of varying dishes neighbors had dropped off over the past few days. As I was plucking Tupperware from here and there, I noted honestly to myself, this is what you will have to do everyday until…

I was a little unsettled.

With the meal heated and ginger tea warmed, we sat down to discuss terms and arrangements. The first thing to go was the free apartment. Should I take on the role as caretaker, I will now have to share a second apartment in the brownstone with visiting family and friends. My eyebrows raised. This wasn’t the previously presented deal. Furthermore, I will be part of a cadre of drop-by caretakers, whose roles were equally as undefined.

Now, aside from being compassionate, I am a stickler for order, peace, rules, terms, conditions. I have found that performing any kind of work otherwise means chaos, arguments, confusion, anger, resentment. I know, I have been there and I have no desire to learn the same lesson twice.

It dawned on me, as we continued talking, that I could not do this job. At least not in a way that was beneficial to my sick friend or to me. I had not known this woman long, but I knew her long enough to know that her illness was going to wreck me because I liked her too much already.

But other things stoked my hesitancy: “Too many cooks spoil the broth,” came instantly to mind, as well as the pure fact that I am a writer, not a nurse; my love of privacy; my love of midday writing where I move from my computer to my couch, iphone in hand to tap out notes; my aversion to vomit; my nervousness when I am not sure of the rules. I had to say to myself, “No, this isn’t for you.”

I called my friend and turned the offer down, saying that in my humble opinion, what our sick friend needed was a proper, trained nurse, even though she seemed galled to accept that fact herself.

Having come this close to taking a sort of job, which was in no way shaped for me, brought home something I had told myself early on in this new unemployment phase of my life: this is the time to do what you really love. Don’t take anything because you are scared or that isn’t true to who you are, even if the deal is speckled with gold.