Fired for Now: Getting fired, laid off, and hired again

It’s being dubbed the “Do-It-Yourself Recovery”. Across Canada, every media outlet is headlining the latest unemployment figures released yesterday showing a trend that I would suspect is happening with just as much fervor across the U.S.

It’s self-employment and it appears to be propping up the economy.

Here in Canada, the figures for April defied all forecasts that predicted another 50,000 jobs would be lost. Instead, something entirely different happened. There was a gain of 35,900 positions last month keeping the national unemployment rate from rising above its current level of … Continue Reading

Yesterday I invited readers to share the sacrifices they’ve made following job loss. What they’ve had to give up in the face of some harsh economic truths. Certainly, 2009 was the year many of us took a look in the mirror and asked, what do we really need.

Reader dbvanhorn put it very well: “…there’s so much crap we’re told we can’t live without, until we do.”

At the other end of the spectrum are the intangibles. Those things we give up that have nothing to do with the stuff we … Continue Reading

Yesterday, I met my first prospective tenant. I’m making a big change in living arrangements in order to avoid making other changes – like selling my house.

So I’m giving up my privacy. My sense of self-containment. My freedom to act, behave and express in any way I want at any time of day or night — well, within the limits my family will accept. It’s certainly not as big a change as others have had to make, and it’s probably radical in the view of some others.

What adjustment … Continue Reading

If any of you have been reading my blog for any length of time, you may have noticed that this past week or so I’ve been rather quiet. That’s because my free time lately hasn’t been so free.

In the past month, I’ve been preparing my house to take in a renter in my basement. And it seems lately every evening and weekend is being spent clearing out over 20 years of living and getting it reading for the next 10. That’s a lot of clearing out to do. And a … Continue Reading