The Journey Begins - Florida Unemployment

Ah, unemployment. The place I've experienced in the past, but never quite like this.

It began so simply. I found my backbone.

It's not that I didn't feel the insults that happened over five years. I did. I managed to sublimate them, thinking they were natural. But five years? I'm getting old. I guess I just can't eat as much sh*t as I could when I was a younger man. So, after being hired by a guy that promised flex time, then changed his mind (after I had worked there for two years and actually wanted to take advantage of a short term period of flex time, something I had never did before at that job), and putting up with his unsavory inquiries into my sex life (why would I want to share my sexual encounters with him after work? Why??), his public threats, and private insults to my work (work which I was not qualified to do, but since he asked me to do it as part of my job, I took it on - heck, how hard could it be right?), I finally told the abusive boss to find someone else to "serve him". He actually professed wonder why I was grinning when I verified that he was indeed firing me, and therefore I would not have to be trapped in the office to put up with his increasingly vicious tirade. I never felt better walking off a job (actually, I've NEVER done anything like that before, never walked off a job, never acted like that).

As I cleaned my office of personal belongings he came up behind me, saw Dreamweaver on one of the computers I use, and asked me "what's Dreamweaver do?"

I told him "You just spent twenty minutes yelling at me about how you can do my job. If that were true, you'd know what that was for." He had vanished the next time I looked.

But that's in the past.

Florida unemployment is as bad as any attempt to give "drug users and losers a free handout" (as my conservative friends say) could be under a Republican administration in Florida. The site won't work in IE Explorer 10 or 11, no one answers the phone, and if the system appears to work for you, you just don't know until at least three weeks goes by and you haven't seen or heard a thing. Then someone will call you and begin querying how you've been searching for a job (with yet another abusive boss, most likely), and you'd better do it at least 5 times a week or you won't get your stipend which is, btw, NOT enough to live on if you are single and that is your only source of income at the moment. Imagine having a kid on that system. No, it's remarkably abusive to the people who need it the most - honest, hard working people who demand dignity.

Right to work.


To survive, you find yourself in a steadily tightening noose of bills and the hunt for a job, made far more complex by having to hunt for new, cheaper accommodations and ways to live while searching for employment in a job market where your competition outnumbers you 10 to 1 at the very least. A car to maintain, and insurance for it (and health insurance for yourself), a secure living space, food, electricity, and internet (if you work on the web that is mandatory). Afford all of that on $250 a week (before taxes), maximum.The only way you can do it is to live in a third world situation with four or five others in the same apartment. Secure? Try it sometime.

But enough of that.

We do what we can. I figure my path will be freelance writing and web managing from now on. At least I have marketable skills. Things got better almost immediately. But what about those who have to survive in that cesspool? God, is this the system our great society has created for worthwhile Americans? Destitution, victimization, a death spiral for the people who find themselves in this situation, who don't have the means to climb out? This is a crime.

I am truly now a rat in the mill.


It all makes me very depressed.

Please check back frequently for updates! Many new things to come. I promise you will be amused.

Hello world.

Hello world. I'll be keeping this blog in order to keep my fans up to date in the hunt for the chupacabra, the hunt for a rat free living space, and my other travels.