The Inside Pitch

It’s been roughly 25 days, four hours, 17 minutes and 33 seconds since my appearance on CNN’s 30-Second Pitch.

And still no job.

But who’s counting.

To be perfectly honest, I thought I would get a response from a lot of people, but I didn’t expect to get a job out of it.

The good news is I have in fact heard from A LOT of people.

The bad news, I suppose, is that I am still unemployed.

I did connect with many different people from around this great country, most showing support for my situation.

There was a wonderful lady who said I was the most inspiring person she had ever seen on that segment.   

She then offered me a job way outside of my field and WAAAAAAAAAAY outside of my comfort level.

But to have a “stranger” extend that offer, when many of my “friends” can’t even return an email, for that I will be forever grateful.

There have been several people who have expressed an interest in my writing.   (I wonder if they have actually read this blog.)

But to this point, there has been nothing more than the trading of some emails.

I did hear from Peter Anthony Holder, a 20-year on-air vet of TV & Radio in Canada.

Peter has had to reinvent himself several times and he has had great success doing so.

He is currently hosting a fantastic online program called The Stuph File, which is “an eclectic show featuring interview and odd news.”

Peter contacted me after he saw the CNN segment and asked me to be a guest on his show.

I’m not sure if I’m the eclectic, the interview or the odd part of his program, but it was a fun segment to do and I really appreciate Peter reaching out.
(There is a link to the interview posted below.)

But even with all the wonderful people, like Peter, who have contacted me after my 30 seconds of fame, there is one person who stands out.

Her name is Betsy.

Within an hour of my appearance on CNN, my new 60-year old friend wrote me a 237 word email with some very personal information.

So personal that I will leave out many of the details.

But suffice to say, Betsy shared with me the background of her own unemployment situation, the serious medical issues that she has been dealing with for several years, the need for her 35-year old son to move back home so she could afford her rent and a much understood battle with depression that she is fighting day by day.

I responded as quickly as I could and made it very clear that her situation had touched me deeply.

I also made it clear that I am not an expert in the field of advice, but I just try to speak from the heart.

I told her that we are both blessed to have our kids so close to us and that I try to take advantage of that every day.

I wanted to hug her, but my computer doesn’t offer that feature, so instead I just told her:

• “I hope you are able to find one positive every day and maybe tomorrow you will find two.   At that rate, you life will have many rewards in a short time.”

I didn’t know what to say, but I wanted to say something.

I needed to say something.

Once again she replied almost immediately, thanking me for my note and my answer.

Thanking me?   No, thank you.

She then pointed out a couple of positive things that had happened to her recently, which made me smile (and cry at the same time).

She said when she was working, she had wished to have time off to enjoy a beautiful spring day.

Now she has that time.

“We’ve had a beautiful spring so far and I’ve been able to enjoy most of the days.  That’s another positive!,” she said.

She then thanked me again for my open heart and the gift I gave by telling my story.

Two days later, she wrote me again to list another positive moment in her life.

Tony Robbins, are you there?

If nothing more comes out of my appearance on CNN than a 12-minute interview with Peter and a friendship with Betsy, it will be a HUGE success.

The day before Mother’s Day I got another email from Betsy.

This time she was “just checking in to say hello.”

She wanted to know if I had found any work yet.

She’s still looking too, but “not to worry, I am doing other things since I have the time.”

And that’s a positive.

Visiting Ours

Hi and Thanks.

Those three words were on the subject line of a recent email I received from a loyal reader.

On the surface, it looked a whole lot like so many of the other incredible emails of support I have received since I started writing this blog nearly four months ago.

But there was something inside that was not so ordinary.

The note, from a wonderful 26-year old with her entire life in front of her, spoke about how she recently moved back in with mom and dad because her paid internship had ended and she couldn’t get a full-time job.

She was working two jobs and was still not able to pay the rent to live on her own.  

She said that many of her friends are going through similar troubles and that it's hard not to get bogged down in the negative.

I hear you sister.

She said that my blog inspired her to restart her own blog in “an attempt to express some of my feelings about this new world I’m entering.”

That’s where many notes I have received just like it, ended.

But not hers.

She said she probably wouldn’t have written to me if it wasn’t the posts about my mom.

Like my mom, her uncle struggled with Bipolar Disorder until he lost his battle with it.

Fortunately my mom is still fighting.

And I’m glad to say, she is fighting hard.

After three weeks, she is out of the hospital and has moved into a temporary nursing facility until she transitions back to her full-time assisted living home.

Saturday I went to visit her.

Now based on our daily phone conversations, where I barely get a word in, I had a pretty good idea of what the visit was going to be like.

And it didn’t disappoint.

There were A LOT of stories that I had heard A LOT of times before.

Sometimes, in my own twisted way of coping, I think I enjoy some of "the greatest hits", knowing the punch line is moments away.

Then when the payoff comes, I get a nice chuckle in my head.  

I can only imagine what is going on in hers.

Sometimes, I just can't take it anymore.

But there was something a little different about this visit.

Instead of getting frustrated, I just let her go wild.  For over an hour.

And wild it was.

She asked if I still eat a big bowl of cereal every morning.   Which I don't.  Too many carbs.

Somehow she transitioned my answer into...
...our family friend Mike used to eat a bowl twice the size of yours... then he would molest his daughter and his wife was a chain smoker and one day the doctor pulled a piece of silver from the cigarette out of her lung.

Holy right turn Batman.

I told her my son’s baseball team won their game earlier in the day.

Somehow that turned into...
...one time she was seduced by a hall-of-fame pitcher in the prime of his pitching career, but my mom turned him down because “what would have happened if I hurt you in bed.”

She told me that the Mafia still runs everything in the world.

That became...
...she was on a trip through the Panama Canal (40+ years ago) and the company that owned the boat had a name with the same first four letters of a company that the Mafia used for...
...honestly, I missed the end of that story.   Sorry.

She told me that Joy Behar is on fire.

She talked about her Rum Cake recipe, again.

She talked about my college graduation party, 21 YEARS AGO.

She talked about the necklace her father sent her when she was 19.

She talked about the shoes she was wearing are 40 years old.

She talked about Satchel Paige & Rupert Murdoch & Frank Sinatra.

If you were there, you would’ve loved it.

The stories she was telling are amazing and ALL TRUE.  She’s lived an incredible life.

But the sad fact is, I’ve heard these stories before.  

MANY times before.

Normally I’m counting the minutes until my departure, but there was something different about this visit.

Something special.

Maybe it was that I knew THIS manic episode was clearly coming to an end and these stories were nothing more than an 80-year old woman driving down memory lane. 

Or maybe it was that I finally accepted that she is just a sweet old lady, who was dealt a bad deck of cards.

Or maybe it was the words of the “Hi and Thanks” email bellowing through my head:

• “(Bipolar) is a horrible, horrible misunderstood disease.  I wanted to let you know that you’re doing the right things.  Bipolar disorder, much like Alzheimer’s, can be just as hard on the people around the sufferer.   There’s no shame in that and when you share your stories, you make a misunderstood disease a little more accessible.”

As I left the facility, my mom thanked me for a great visit, even though she was the one who did all the visiting.

I said Goodbye and Thanks, and headed home.

"Checking In"

With those two little words -- “Checking In” -- on the subject line of an email that arrived at 7:18am, the tone for day was set.

When I was working, there would be days where it felt like I couldn’t go a minute without getting a new work email. Now, I go full days without getting anything. I’m even off the list of people to get their package enlarged -- if you know what I mean.

I used to look forward to seeing my voice mail light unlit, now I can’t wait for the phone to ring, even if it’s a telemarketer.

It’s hard to believe that people were only talking to me because of where I was and not who I was, but with each passing day, it’s becoming more clear.

Perhaps the most disappointing and discouraging part of this unemployment process is the lack of response from people I considered friends.

Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t expecting and am not expecting ANY kind of free meal and I certainly never expected somebody to hand me a job “just because we were friends”, but I didn’t expect this sound of silence.

I have joked with myself -- because no one else is listening -- that I should keep a list of all the people who have not had the courtesy of returning an email.

(Note to self: you have a project for tomorrow.)

Whether it’s passive-aggressive or courteous of just plain dumb, I have chosen to try and make contact with people via email instead of hitting the phone lines.

The last thing I want to do is cross that line of confronting a “friend” for a job and making them uncomfortable. I figured, everybody knows how to respond to an email these days.

I have certainly contacted many of my former colleagues to make them aware of my situation and at the least, I expected a response of “I will keep my eyes and ears open”, but in reality I have received pretty much nothing.

Recently, I sent out eleven different follow-up emails to friends in the business to say hello and see if they had heard anything. (Keep in mind that these eleven are just a fraction of a the hundreds I have sent out to others.)

A month later, here’s the tally.

Two people responded -- including one, who my father once hired for his “big break” and a friend who I used to work with, who now is the top executive in his company.

Response #1 (from my dad’s friend) was basically: don’t call me, i’ll call you.

Response #2 (from my friend) was thanks for the update.

That would mean that the other nine “friends” couldn’t find the time to respond. I would’ve taken a “Thank You”, “Screw You” or anything in the middle, but in the end, I got nothing.

Hey, there’s always tomorrow.