Personal value in the Post-Hitchcock Cinema/life

I am, like a hell of a lot of men and women my age, looking for work.  I don't write much about my personal life here. I don't really enjoy reading blogs that are diaries. My problems are sometimes greater but mostly nothing compared to the burdens that other's carry.  But, despite using all my networking skills, submitting a countable 600 plus resumes and application, I get a handful of even the auto-response polite refusals.  I used to take this personally until MacDonald's had a million show up for the few positions they offered recently. Somehow this is not how we envisioned the second million man march.


Hitchcock never dealt directly with the issues of the unemployed--but he dealt masterfully with the panic, confusion and anxiety over the lost identity.  And this is truly what it means to be unemployed in America.  And, mostly, I can carry this burden into each day as I look for work and push forward my social security claim (for I have legitimate health issues which make work mostly impossible, but hey, until that comes . . .) 


I know who I am and I know my human value.  But the silent, disconcertingly silent pounding from employers and the concerted, disconcertingly lack of respect from friends and family who are certain that to be unemployed  means you're lazy and inept (although never sure how those two should somehow compliment each other in a sentence--after all, would the lazy really care if they were inept--and, in general, the ept seem quite ept at being lazy) take their toll.  They add to the inner chorus that chants inside every creative person, smart man or woman, that they are right.  That I'm a fake, my wit has convinced the world and even more hapless self that I had something to offer--and that sadly, the gigs up. 


I'm sure everyone has this inner doubting Thomas, but for those creatives who so often climb out on the limb, that inner jerk is always right behind you, sawing away at that limb trying to bring it down.


And, my fellow employed without payment late baby boomers, those who count you out, inside your head or outside, strangers, or family and friends, are jerks.  We are all looking for gainful employment, and I believe that my generation of men and women who have, so far, taken this hard hit pretty politely, will find work in an economy that our President will help our nation build.


In the end, I have hope--it is, surprisingly, considering the vitriol which I have endured as I've looked for work from those offering that cracker barrel tough love.  And the humiliation,--the deep, silent, frozen Langston Hughes' mask like smile humiliation that is built into the American man who accepts handouts (and the triple humiliation of accepting the fact that he is disabled and then being denied assistance).  In movies and in depression-era photographs, we often see men accepting the help with heads bowed.   I use to think that it was shame--not wanting to see the other person's eyes.  It is not shame. It is weight, a full heavy weight, a huge heaping pile of self loathing and self hatred that you, you who had once helped and thought nothing of it, now must be helped and cannot think of anything else. 


In spite of the Republicans, we can and we will get our jobs back.  We have not lost who we are; but I do believe some of our fellow countrymen have lost who we are, and sadly, in doing so, have placed the wrong bet on who they think they are.


That is what I tell myself and I now hold on to the last threads of believing that.  This morning, I applied for three different positions for which I'm either dead-on qualified, and a few that I'm overqualified.  I spoke with a friend back in California who has been unemployed longer than I have, and is also in his late 40s, who just started working at an Apple Store.  It's not even a quarter what he once earned, but it's a job and we both wept quiet tears of what that now means.
So, if you need a writer/editor/researcher/pencil sharpener/engaging speaker/theater cleaner/chair warmer--you can find me here. Way too often.