Look at me, mom. I’m on TV… again. Okay, so it’s TV via the web. And I’m not the main focus of the segment; that honor goes to Ellen Reeves, author of “Can I Wear My Nose Ring to the Interview? A Crash Course in Finding, Landing and Keeping Your First Real Job.” But that is me (the devastatingly handsome, not-looking-a-day-over-27, Skyped-in guy on the left). And that is Katie Couric. Maybe you’ve heard of her, or recognize the face. I didn’t, until someone over at CBS contacted the Jobless and Less press department, prompting the VP, Communications to task a Research Assistant with exploring Ms. Couric’s alleged celebrity. She checked out. So I accepted their request to participate in a piece entitled…

Jobless in America

Luckily for them, I’m both jobless and in America. Strange coincidence, wouldn’t you say? I’d like to rectify the “jobless” part (I rather enjoy the “in America” part). Maybe some plight exposure would help. It certainly couldn’t hurt. Or could it? That was one of my questions… does having an unemployment blog, which sets me up as an expert in being unemployed, create a negative impression among potential employers? I’ve been unemployed quite awhile now, freelance assignments notwithstanding. There is the ever-so-slight possibility that I’m doing something wrong. Take a moment to digest the realization that I’m fallible. I’ll wait.

Ms. Reeves informs me that my blog is, in fact, a good thing. Employers will see it as showing initiative and a willingness to learn new skills. They’ll also recognize my attempts to stay active and help other people. The success I’ve had attracting visitors and press will probably help too. Now if only someone would hire me, or knight me. That would be cool. But I’d prefer a job. Or a million dollars, I’d take that… just sayin’.

The Katie Couric segment has already led to one positive development. Ms. Reeves is going to help me reinvent myself, hopefully change me from an unemployment expert/online marketing guru into a job-having expert/online marketing guru. This may involve some or all of the following…

• Hair and wardrobe changes
  
• Resume revamping
• Fantasy job description (Maybe I’ll finally get to be a warlock with a cloak of invisibility.)
• Elevator pitch improvement

This is actually a good opportunity, and despite my usual irreverence, I will take it seriously. Stay tuned, fair readers, for more in the continuing saga that is my unemployment. And enjoy the video segment. Ms. Reeves and the Wall Street Journal guy both know what they’re talking about. May they teach you something, or, at least, confirm what you already know.

How New Yorkers see the world, courtesy of that other New York magazine. (courtesy of The New Yorker)

Queens doesn’t exist. Or maybe it just disappeared one day while everyone was checking their smartphones and being social. There’s a giant void between Manhattan, Brooklyn and Nassau County. Woodside… felled. Flushing… down the toilet. Jackson Heights… sunk. Only the quickly gentrifying Astoria remains, visible from the Upper East Side on the rare occasion someone looks east and wonders, “what’s over there?”

I suspect the rest of Queens might still be here too, somewhere. I manage to leave and get back to my apartment everyday. None of the many trains that stop in Jackson Heights resemble the Hogwarts Express. Besides, whole boroughs don’t just disappear, at least not literally. We New Yorkers do ignore the parts of the city we don’t visit. We forget about them, go about our lives in blissful ignorance. What other explanation could there possibly be for Queens’s poor showing in New York Magazine’s recently published issue covering the City’s best cheap restaurants?

Eat Cheap 2010

No one who’s ventured across the East River to the outer borough that’s not Brooklyn could argue that the food sucks. Queens is anything but a culinary wasteland. Jackson Heights alone has some of the City’s best Thai and Indian food as rated by other reputable food resources, not to mention Colombian and Mexican and Vietnamese. Hipsters make pilgrimages to my neighborhood to sample the street food; I see them under the 7 train with their pegged jeans and printout maps every weekend. And everything in Queens is cheap, cheap, cheap. Wifey and I can eat out for less than $25 total. We smile when we pay the check, because it feels like stealing. And then we walk home.

In New York Magazine’s rundown, any entree under $25 qualifies as cheap. The whole bill at many of the restaurants mentioned would be much higher…$60 or $70 for a couple who shares an appetizer, orders two entrees and washes it down with tasty beverages. Not everyone can afford that price for dinner. And even fewer people would call that cheap. Of course, all the individual food items covered are less than $25. I don’t mean to suggest otherwise. But calling them cheap eats can be a little misleading.

The $25 dividing line is also an important clue. New York Magazine’s readers are professionals, with a certain income and standard of living. Or at least they aspire to those things. I read the magazine (translation: look at the pretty pictures) to seem smart on the train once it crosses out of the Land that Food Forgot. And because the colors make me happy. The Magazine is an excellent source for commentary on local, national and international events. It’s also known for its informative restaurant reviews. When I need a recommendation for a nice place to take wifey for her birthday, that’s where I turn. Many of my friends do the same, which is why wifey gets a lot of expensive free meals around her birthday.

The restaurants covered in this issue are mostly in Manhattan and Brooklyn, because the Magazine’s readers are mostly in Manhattan and Brooklyn. A few restaurants in Astoria – the Queens neighborhood where priced-out Manhattanites and Brooklynites go – are mentioned. Now more than ever, magazines, like politicians, have to pander to their base. I get it. Times are tough for a printed publication in a digital world. And I don’t begrudge New York Magazine trying to serve its readers. A media company needs to make a buck, lest its paying customers go elsewhere and its writers and editors find themselves on the fair-trade, organically baked bread lines.

But the Magazine is named after the whole city. And the last time I checked, the City had five boroughs. Claiming to represent the best cheap food in New York is just plain misleading. I eat some of the best cheap food in the city all the time. And it’s not in Manhattan or Brooklyn. It’s in Queens… usually Jackson Heights for me. The borough is home to some of the best cheap eats anywhere. How else could an unemployed guy and his wife afford a decent meal out? By failing to show the whole picture, the Magazine does its readers a great disservice.

Maybe it just doesn’t give them enough credit. Queens, outside of Astoria, probably seems like a foreign country, something to pass through on the way to the airport or the U.S. Open. It feels strange to me sometimes, and I live here. People generally gravitate to the familiar, in this case familiar foods close to home. But New York Magazine readers are a smart and curious lot. They know there’s a bigger world out there. And they want to learn about it. Sooner or later they will see that big void across the East River and wonder what’s there. If New York Magazine doesn’t tell them, somebody else will.

You spill my coffee beans. But you also give me a tasty beverage. Do I slap you or hug you? I'll get back to you with my decision. (courtesy of http://www.adamas.com)

I’m a creature of habit. My morning commute to my five-month freelance gig always included a stop for coffee. The project’s long hours made caffeine a necessity. Soon enough, the caffeine headaches made caffeine a necessity. My trip always led me past one of two decent coffee places, depending on the route. The fancy-sounding though utilitarian Pret A Manger – located between the R train and the office – was one. The tasty though overpriced City Bakery – located between the F and V train and the office – was the other. A Pret iced coffee cost me $2.49; a City Bakery iced coffee $3.00 or $3.75, depending on the size. Both were well within my budget while employed.

The freelance gig ended a week and a half ago. The smartphone I was helping to market successfully launched, and is available in a store near you, and 137 stores near me. I won’t say which smartphone it is, though here’s a hint: touching a certain spot with your bare hand won’t hang up your call, unless that spot is the disconnect button. If you need another hint, follow me around and listen. You may catch me inadvertently humming the intro music to one of the videos. It’s forever burned into my temporal lobe.

Another smartphone project may be in my near future. And smaller, unrelated projects are starting to roll in. The last few months of paychecks have bulked up my bank account. But the next few months of paychecks are uncertain. Being essentially unemployed, I’ve reverted to my super, extra frugal ways. No more weekend trips to the south of France . No more summer vacations in the Hamptons. No more chauffeured limousine double-parked out front and ready for my next cookie run. It’s back to life, back to reality.

My first order of business, as someone without a steady income or government handout, was to reexamine my extravagant spending. I brought in executives from PriceWaterhouseCoopers to review my books. They determined that I have no books. But were I to have books, they would be empty, because compared to their usual clients, I’m broke. But were I to have books and money to track in those books, they would contain no extravagant spending. Wifey verified, citing the closet full of toiletries, paper products and breakfast cereal purchased in bulk on sale. I’m one frugal bastard. A raging $3.00-a-day caffeine addiction accounts for most of my discretionary spending.

Cutting back on coffee purchases is every financial advice columnist’s go-to tip. Want to be rich… make your own coffee. Somewhere along the line a Starbucks barista screwed up a freelance writer’s grande double soy mocha-frappu-latte and the company has paid the price in print ever since. Though lazy and cliche, the point is still valid. My coffee purchases add up to $90.00 a month or $1080 a year or $108,000 a century. That’s a lot of money. If I saved for the next 100 years, I could buy a kitchen cabinet or, perhaps, a bathtub in Manhattan. Of course, by then I’d be too dead to enjoy it.

The savings could still come in handy in the shorter term. There was just one problem. I only knew how to make hot coffee. And hot coffee in the New York heat and humidity is about as unappealing as reading job boards. Whatever is a caffeine addict to do? My solution – made possible by a grant from my last full-time employer – was pretty damn ingenious. I would make my own iced coffee. And because I figured out how, you don’t have to. Everyone always says, “that Norm… he’s a giver.” They’re right.

The first step is to buy some decent coffee beans. Wifey (then girlfriendy) taught me once upon a time that coffee doesn’t have to taste like runny tar water. Up to that point in my life, I’d drank it only to stay awake for exams and term papers. Enjoyment never mattered. These days, I’m a bit of a coffee snob. It doesn’t have to be expensive; Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonalds both make a cheap yet respectable cup. It just has to taste like something I want to drink. I went with the NYC blend from Oren’s Daily Roast for $13.49 a pound. Sometimes saving money requires a small upfront investment.

The second step is to brew the coffee really strong. Pouring regular hot coffee over ice cubes doesn’t give you iced coffee. It gives you a watered-down, room-temperature brown liquid. And that’s only enjoyable for people who like hanging out in 12-step meetings and hospital waiting rooms. Most recipes call for two scoops of coffee grounds for every cup of water (hot coffee is generally a 1:1 ratio). That was a little too strong for my refined palate and sensitive constitution. Delicate flower that I am, I had to let the ice melt and water it down. Adding a little more water to the next pot did the trick. Iced coffee, I discovered, reaches perfection at 12 scoops of coffee grounds for every 7 cups of water.

The third step is to add sugar while the coffee is still hot. Sugar doesn’t dissolve in cold coffee; it ends up as a tasty sludge in the bottom of a cup. While a nice little dessert to your beverage, it doesn’t really sweeten it. Four spoonfuls for seven cups proved to to be the right level of sweetness. Wifey would argue that that’s four spoonfuls too many. She would be wrong. It’s the perfect amount to bring out the flavor of the coffee without overwhelming it.

The fourth step is to chill. I put the coffee pot in the fridge. Six hours later, the iced coffee is ready to drink. If nothing else, unemployment has made me good at waiting. Pour it over some ice cubes, add some milk and enjoy. Maybe click away from UselessJobSite.com or NotHiringInc.com for a few minutes. Coffee time should be me time.

One $13.49 bag of coffee beans has given me six days worth of iced coffee so far. And there’s probably another four days worth to go. That’s a savings of $16.51 per bag, or $49.53 per month… not too shabby. If my knowledge of first grade math still holds up, that’s almost $50. I could buy something with that kind of money, besides coffee. Maybe when I find a full-time job, I will.

I'm being social, by ignoring the people around me... so out of my way! (courtesy of New York Times)

Walking consists of two major components: moving your feet and looking ahead. If you don’t move your feet, you stay in one place. This is called standing, or, in New York, tourism. If you don’t look ahead, you run into things, or things with the right of way run into you. This is called stupidity, or, in New York, stupidity. Over the last year and a half, many pedestrians on busy city sidewalks have decided that one major component of walking doesn’t matter anymore. Anybody care to guess which one?

When I unceremoniously left the job market in late 2008, most people still used regular cell phones. We made phone calls and sent text messages. We played that game in which a bouncing ball makes blocks disappear. Then we put the phones in our pockets and walked. We did one thing at a time, as our parents taught us, and we did it well. The trendsetters who walked among us while talking and texting were seen as oddities, and belittled mercilessly. Life was simpler then. Men held doors and tipped their hats. Women curtsied. People had, you know, jobs. Maybe I’m just remembering a New York that never was, like in a Meg Ryan movie on WE TV that you can’t turn off even though you’ve seen it 100 times, memorized all the funny parts, including the fake orgasm in Katz’s Deli, and find Billy Crystal’s hair really, really disturbing.

When I last left the employed ranks, smartphones had been around awhile. The first iPhone launched in early 2007; the first BlackBerry came along well before that. But they hadn’t gained critical mass. The fall of the economy somehow ushered in the age of the smartphone. It seems a little counter-intuitive on the face of it. Then again, what’s more American than spending money you don’t have? The smartphone also birthed a whole new breed of city pedestrian… the smartphone zombie. New York sidewalks are now overrun with reading, texting, emailing, surfing, tweeting, status-updating, app-using, video-watching, music-downloading, game-playing zombies who don’t look where they’re going.

Today’s white collar worker is used to multitasking. We juggle email and IM and Word docs and Excel spreadsheets and countless other desktop applications designed to make us more efficient. It’s necessary and expected, even though constantly switching tasks has been shown to reduce productivity. The smartphone extends the workspace to a hand-held device and anywhere someone can take it. So multitasking logically carries over too. Arriving in one piece is no longer accomplishment enough. We must get things done en route. The world won’t wait, but it is expected to stop when a smartphone zombie weaves down the sidewalk and wanders out into traffic.

I’ve seen many smartphone zombies almost die and not even realize it. They step out in front of buses and cabs. They wait to cross the street, in the middle of the street. They ride bicycles against one-way traffic without looking. I’m perfectly okay with people self-selecting themselves out of the human race. Humanity is better off if the stupid gene doesn’t reproduce. I just don’t want to be involved. More to the point, I don’t want to be inconvenienced. Too bad it’s unavoidable.

Smartphone zombies get in the way. They’re attracted to high-traffic areas, such as doorways, sidewalks, subway platforms and the tops and bottoms of escalators. Eyes glazed over, they seem to lack any awareness of the world around them, or any interest in it. And they don’t seem to understand that someone else might need to pass through the space they occupy. Or they just don’t care. I routinely have to push smartphone zombies out of the way… zombies leaning on the front door of my apartment building, zombies blocking the exit of a retail establishment, zombies lounging by the subway escalator. And when I do, it’s somehow my fault.

Change being the only constant, I expected the world to be a different place when I returned to work. How could it not be? But I thought some basic things – like walking – would remain essentially the same. The New York sidewalk slalom was treacherous enough without the smartphone zombie swarms wandering about. Now, not only do I have to look out for myself, I have to look out for the other guy too…  the guy who’s too busy harnessing technology to see the world around him.

The call went out. Maybe you saw the big “U” projected onto the Empire State Building. Maybe you heard the siren song blaring from large speakers mounted on flatbeds circling the city. Maybe you received a little note slipped into your pocket as some nondescript pedestrian brushed by on the sidewalk. RT (Russian Television) needed an unemployed person, an expert, stat, to comment on this bit of ridiculousness…

Looking for work? Unemployed need not apply

Who better than me, unofficial spokesman for the unemployed? Okay, so the call was an email. And I’m not technically unemployed at the moment. Oh yeah, and I can’t form a coherent sentence without my monkeys and their typewriters. But let’s not fuss over exactly how it all went down. I got the gist right. My blog and I were in the right place at the right time. The rest is television history.

Some employers don’t consider the unemployed for open positions. That was the story making the rounds. I wasn’t surprised to find this out. I wasn’t angry. I was, at best, slightly intrigued or, perhaps, mildly bemused. An unemployed friend posted a link on Facebook about the growing phenomenon. Anyone who’s been unemployed during a recession probably suspected this was happening. I know I did. There had to be a better reason for all the unreturned calls and emails than a simple lack of jobs. I’m not that bad of a job candidate, or am I?

Companies receive tons of resumes for every opening, many from people who aren’t remotely qualified. Separating the maybe’s from the no’s takes time and resources, both of which are in short supply these days. And let’s be realistic. Most resumes are ruled out even in a normal hiring climate; the percentage only rises during a recession. Employers can afford to be extra picky in a buyer’s market. But the short-staffed and shortsighted HR department needs a shortcut, an easy way to reduce the pile. Ruling out the unemployed is that shortcut.

Common thinking suggests someone is unemployed for a reason – they’re an undesirable employee. They don’t show up on time. They do substandard work. They wear soup-stained shirts and smell like dried cat vomit. A desirable employee would’ve found a job already, or never lost it in the first place. So failure to be employed is seen as proof that someone is unfit to be employed. I failed to win the lottery today. Does that make me unfit to win the lottery? The thinking is flawed. And any company that thinks this way is missing out.

People lose jobs for all sorts of reasons. I lost four different jobs for four different reasons, none of which had anything to do with my performance. Each of my former employers experienced some sort of financial duress and could no longer afford to pay some of its employees. People don’t find new jobs for just as many reasons as they lose jobs. During an employment crisis, one reason trumps all others: there are very few jobs.

The need to reduce the applicant pool won’t go away any time soon. Unemployment sits at 9.7%, and the ratio of unemployed to available jobs is 5 to 1. Submitting a resume is easier than ever. Ruling out unemployed applicants will continue. Companies still discriminate on the basis of race, sex, age and sexual orientation, and those practices are illegal. The unemployed can only take solace in knowing that any company that picks its employees this way isn’t worth working for. Too bad solace doesn’t pay the bills.

Morning and evening rush hour on the subway is quiet time. The trains are crowded with commuters. But everyone sleeps or reads or daydreams or listens to music through headphones. Nobody talks, and nobody bothers anyone. It’s a very New York feeling to be surrounded and still alone. And during rush hour – when you’re still half asleep or tired from a long day – it’s a very welcome feeling.

This Rush Hour Quiet Time rule – more commonly known as the Shut the F**k Up Before I Jab You in the Larynx with a Bic Pen rule (STFUBIJYITLWABP) has been understood and respected by generations of NYC commuters, dating back to the early 20th century. Of course, in the those days, it was called the Scram With That Funny Business Fella Before I Let You Have It In The Larynx rule (SWTFBFBILYHIITL). Even a simple “good day” or “bully for you” brought about swift retribution. People work, and people value their larynges… then and now. In fact only three unwritten rules have ever been more important…

• Don’t pet the rats.
• Don’t sit in a wet spot.
• Avoid the empty subway car on an otherwise crowded train, unless you enjoy smelly homeless people fermenting in their own sweat.

Rush hours were quality time when I last had regular work. Opportunists now routinely violate the rule for their own petty and selfish reasons. People have loud conversations on cell phones. Homeless and “homeless” people beg for handouts. And subway musicians force their mediocre music upon weary travelers. The first two can be easily ignored by turning up the iPod. The last can’t.

I don’t mean to hate on music. I’ve been a big music fan since my days playing the “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” drum solo on mom’s kitchen bowls. And I don’t mean to hate on street and subway musicians. Some great performers ply their trade on sidewalks and platforms. The Yanni-looking electric violin player in black leather pants who covers Depeche Mode and Metallica is a national treasure. He almost balances out all the harm Nicolas Cage has done with his movies.

The point is I like my music on my terms. I listen to what I want, when I want and how I want. Take away my choice, and I get a little pissy. I may even reach for my Bic pen. This reaction may seem harsh to non-New Yorkers. Subway music is as big apple as Times Square, the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty. So let’s recast the scenario for those who have only experienced subway musicians as tourists and through TV shows and movies.

You’re driving to work on a Monday morning. Traffic is moving nicely. Something relaxing plays from the car stereo. The light ahead turns red, slowing cars to a stop. You close your eyes and rub them slowly with your thumb and forefinger, thinking about what needs to get done that day. Just then, two guys jump into the backseat. One has a rusty accordion, the other an out-of-tune acoustic guitar. They launch into a song you can’t understand because it’s in Spanish. And they do it three feet from your head. The light turns green, and traffic forces you into motion. The music pounds against your brain. You turn up the stereo, but the noise from the backseat still drowns it out. After three minutes, they stop playing. One of them puts his empty hat in your face; he wants you to pay for the giant headache he just gave you. You wonder what combination of evil thoughts will make him explode, and then make the pieces explode. Before you hit on it, the light ahead turns red and you stop the car again. The musicians jump out and into the car behind you. Two traffic lights later, two other musicians make a stage of your backseat.

What if the music were really good? Would it be okay? No. What if the music were absolutely, positively the best I’d ever heard, ever? Still no. What if angels descended from heaven and sang to me on F train as it sped through the tunnel under the East River? Would it would be okay then? The answer is still a resounding NO. I want to hear what’s playing through my headphones. That’s why I picked it. That’s why I put in my headphones. And that’s why I pressed play. So unless the same musician materializes and plays the same song the same way, I’m not interested.

Subway musicians feel the recession just as everyone else does. Maybe the non-rush hour donations just weren’t cutting it. Maybe they lost a job and resorted to a secondary talent to pay the bills. I respect that. I’m in the same boat. But you’ll never catch me forcing random people to read my blog and pay me for the privilege. Pick a subway platform and play your music. I may stop and listen; I may even leave a couple bucks. And I may not. But the choice will be mine.

The contents of my bank account. (courtesy of http://static.squidoo.com)

So much has changed since I last held down a job and forced it to stay. Some of it’s good; some of it’s not so good. And some of it just is. Let’s review the high points. Class, please follow along. This material will be on the final…

• I have two beautiful young nieces, whom I’ve secretly vowed to make avid football fans, once they’re old enough to understand one immutable truth. Large men running into each other and falling down is a beautiful thing.
• The country has a different president. Maybe you noticed. Maybe you voted for him. Maybe you even swooned as the world crowned him America’s savior. And maybe you recognized he’s just a man with a lot of work to do and a lot of people standing in his way. Any way you spin it, I was last employed during the Bush administration.

• Another oil company ruined another body of water. We’ll learn shortly if Gulf shrimp tastes better glazed with crude. I generally prefer a tangy lime sauce.
• More countries were struck with natural disasters. It’s one thing to whine about unemployment in my upright apartment with wifey across the room tapping on her computer. It’s quite another to earn $5/month picking mangoes and then have your home reduced to rubble and your family killed. Huge catastrophes have a way of providing a little perspective.
• My bank account is a little emptier or, as I prefer to see it, more spacious.
• The number of cell phone stores within a block of my apartment jumped from six to nine. The number of 99 cent stores stayed constant at four. And the battle for eyebrow supremacy between my neighborhood’s eyebrow waxing and threading meccas seems to have ended in a draw. The age-old question that’s plagued mankind for centuries (how many eyebrow super emporiums can a neighborhood support?) has been answered. Two.
• “Lost” ended. And I found my Tuesday nights.

Change is the only constant. So it’s not surprising that the working world isn’t what it once was either. I lost my last full-time job in October 2008; I accepted a temporary contractor position with full-time hours in February 2010. A lot is different, including me and my views on things, stuff and what not. And I’m not sure exactly how I feel about it.

When not working for the man every night and day, I will try to figure it all out. The main themes are already becoming obvious; the subtleties are taking their time. And then in the wee hours, by the glow of syndicated sitcoms, I will try to blog about what I learn. Of course, I might just fall asleep. Writing an unemployment blog while employed seems disingenuous. So I need to bide my time until I’m again without job. This should happen soon enough, given my track record and the limited scope of my current project. Then I can get back to my true calling.

Taxes during Armageddon, as imagined by someone who just discovered Photoshop. (courtesy of http://wbtax.com)

I like doing my own taxes. And, no, I’m not insane, at least not like the drunk guy dressed as a female clown who rides his three-wheel bike around my neighborhood with a live parrot on his shoulder. My insanity – since that’s what it probably is – is more pedestrian and middle class. There’s something satisfying about sitting down with a pile of forms, statements and receipts, and ending up with a single number. This is what I owe the federal government or, preferably, this is what the federal government owes me.

Another number tells me a lot more about my life this past year. It sits near the bottom of page one of the 1040 – line 22 to be exact – after the words, “This is your total income.” That number sums up an entire year of working. It’s not a perfect measure. It lacks detail and nuance. It glosses over the personal and societal value of my accomplishments. It entirely ignores what I’ve learned and experienced. It does tell me one thing – how much money I earned. And that number was pretty damn small in 2009.

I’ve been doing my own taxes since the ripe old age of 15. That’s when I had my first real job – pumping gas at the local Amoco – and drew my first paycheck. Like many a suburban teenager, I’d mowed lawns, shoveled driveways and babysat kids. But people paid cash for those services. And as any waiter, bookie or financially savvy homeless person will tell you, cash is much harder for the tax people to track.

My taxes were much simpler then. There wasn’t much to report. All I had was a whopping $3.60/hour income, a bank account with a few hundred bucks and a mutual fund with another few hundred more. As a teenager, I rarely earned more than the standard deduction. So most of the taxes withheld the previous year came back to me. That day in May when the government sent me a nice fat check ranked right up there with my birthday and Christmas and the last day of school and, of course, Arbor Day, the granddaddy of all holidays. Tax refunds sure can buy lots of CDs and prepackaged Donettes from 7-Eleven.

Life is a little more complicated 8 (by which I mean 20+) years later. My expenses include more than music and convenience store food. I do my taxes on a computer using advanced (and awesome) tax software rather than on paper forms using No. 2 pencils with dried-out erasers. And if 2009 is any indication, my earning power has decreased.

If we ignore government unemployment insurance payouts, that total income number – line 22 – has decreased since 1987. I earned less as an experienced worker, with undergraduate and graduate degrees, than I did as a high school sophomore. The government paid my way this past year. And while I was entitled to the money, having been previously employed full-time, I didn’t earn it in 2009. I earned it in 2008 and 2007 and every other year I held down a staff position at a company that paid into the system. We can quibble over the meaning of “earn.” After all, I did spend hundreds, maybe thousands, of hours looking for work; and looking for work is most definitely work. But I wasn’t paid directly for it.

The realization of how little I earned didn’t sink in right away. Maybe I just didn’t want to think about it. And maybe I was too busy rushing to finish my taxes by the April 15 deadline. I always plan to do my taxes in March, and always fail. There’s always something more pressing to get done. This time the culprit was a freelance project that was and continues to sap all my time. Don’t read this as a complaint. I’m happy for the paying work, as is my bank account. It just leaves precious little time for everything else, like blogging, sleeping and filing taxes.

The bright side of all this is that 2010 won’t be a repeat of 2009. I will once again earn more money this year than I did as a high school sophomore. There are many parts of my youth that I’d like back. My income bracket isn’t one of them.

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