unemployment is the new black

loved the article i read in time magazine this week - 'the dropout economy' by reinan salam. i read it and felt even farther tapped in to what has been going on for me since my arrival back in the states. something that has been brewing in my mind for quite a long time, but is now starting to surface as more real than imagined.

salam talked about how more and more young people in the us are opting out of education, jobs, and the taxable economy. his vision of the future is one of intentional communities, barter systems, virtual classrooms, and a throwback to traditional agriculture. these subcultures are simultaneously local and global, traditional and modern.

they are the very things that i am seeing throughout my life and the lives of my friends. people are heading to the wilds to homestead, staying home to create photography or life coaching businesses, and keeping their kids home to attend online high schools. at wintercount there seemed to be more and more apprenticeships offered for people to learn self-sufficiency. friends' parents are become steadfast to the slow foods movement, shopping mostly at farmers' markets.

if you know me well you know that i am constantly balancing between this world and the mainstream. i struggle with issues of ego that push me to value my experiences and situation on a more conventional scale. at the same time i long to live outside of the chorus that presses me to seek the higher paying job or prestigious degree. it's why i came to the utah desert - to opt out of the 'what's next' phenomenon that i followed blindly through two college degrees and into a closet full of pants suits i tried not to wear. i say this not to dis this way of life, but simply to demonstrate that though for several years i wondered if it was for me, i stayed in it because i felt i had to.

it was a huge deal for me to work in the desert of utah with troubled teens. i took a big pay cut and derailed my career plans. i took phone calls and emails for the first six months or so from people in the student affairs field who thought that tossing job opportunities my way might coax me out of my quixotic journey. i lived in my car and in the basement at aspen.

i loved it.

four years later i sit where the end of my fourth year intersects with my thirtieth birthday. i have spent the past 5 months traveling, reflecting, playing, learning, and enjoying being essentially unemployed. it was a very scary thing for me to decide to take off this past winter. i'd really not been without work since i started taking part-time jobs in middle school. i left aspen knowing i was giving up the job and situation i had built over three years. it was the ultimate in letting go.

getting back into things i realize that i am forever changed by that decision. it slid me farther down the slope i'd been on for years - since my third year at wsu when i switched from pantsuits to cords and sweaters despite the professional warnings of colleagues. when i did that i thought i was a rebel. i was in a way. it was a step away from established ways of being. as i read about postmodern thought and toyed with the romantic idea of subverting existing paradigms i did not realize that i had already started to do so in my own goody-two-shoes way.

so what now? well...i think on the salam article with excitement as it unveils ways of being that i dream about. i want to homestead. i want to work for myself. i want to hunt and grow my own food. i want to live off the grid. i find myself thinking about how i can work less and less in a conventional job and more and more in my own sphere. i want to help people. i want to be involved in a community that is local and global, traditional and technological. i don't know how this is going to pan out, but i also don't need to know. instead i keep dreaming and thinking and subverting and waiting. though i have done some work i am still what the census bureau deems unemployed. oddly enough in the midst of all this opting out i made for damn sure i was counted.

i guess i am still teetering in my own way.