One More for the Pile

December 3, 2020 at 2:45 pm

Today marks the offi­cial announce­ment that the com­pa­ny I cur­rent­ly work for is per­ma­nent­ly clos­ing. I did­n’t say ‘at’ because I’ve been work­ing remote from home since March anyway.

We made it fur­ther than most dur­ing this pan­dem­ic, but it’s still anoth­er name to add to the list. One more small busi­ness closed. Five fam­i­lies find­ing new paths. Thousands of cus­tomers pick­ing a new brand to buy. That last line should be read with a hint of sar­casm and a dose of crit­i­cism with a cap­i­tal­ist C.

I’ve still got a few pay­checks to col­lect before I join the other 20 mil­lion unem­ployed Americans or find some other way to make my liveli­hood. I cer­tain­ly feel for­tu­nate to have made it this far. I know oth­ers have been deal­ing with upheaval for most of 2020. The changes I’ve had to make in my life are hard to even clas­si­fy as incon­ve­niences. I’ve been lucky and privileged.

There’s still more stir­ring around, but I haven’t nailed down all the words. This might be all I have today. A sim­ple mark­er for where the trail changes direc­tion. A somber, grim, fore­bod­ing mark­er for the occa­sion — but hey, at least I cre­at­ed some­thing today!

Livelihood

November 30, 2020 at 3:45 pm

Livelihood: a means of securing the necessities of life

“Memaw” Ivey, as she has been affec­tion­ate­ly — or deri­sive­ly? — referred to, tweet­ed the other day. Maybe it’s the empha­sis of this being a reit­er­a­tion. Maybe it’s the con­cise­ness. Something about it sounds more like an ulti­ma­tum than a life les­son, pre­scrip­tive rather than descrip­tive. Something about ‘can­not’ is so defin­i­tive in the statement.

“You can­not have a life with­out a livelihood.”

Why do I get the feel­ing that’s the polite Southern way of say­ing, “If you don’t have a job, you don’t deserve to live.”

It’s true that if you don’t get water, food, and shel­ter — at the bare min­i­mum — then your life will end. There is a fun­da­men­tal aspect to the state­ment that is under­stand­able. It’s also false.

There are plen­ty of peo­ple right­ful­ly exempt from such an expec­ta­tion. Different lev­els of phys­i­cal and men­tal abil­i­ty might pre­vent some­one from being able to take care of them self. We cer­tain­ly don’t expect chil­dren to go it alone and secure their own neces­si­ties. On the other end of the age brack­et, we believe the elder­ly have a right to life with­out con­tin­u­ing to work. So it is pos­si­ble to have a life with­out a livelihood.

Of course, Twitter’s char­ac­ter lim­i­ta­tions pre­vent nuance. Governor Ivey would never say peo­ple who can’t pro­vide for them­selves for­feit their life. That does­n’t sound as nice as, “You can­not have a life with­out a livelihood.”