Send In the Clowns

As I get closer to getting laid off I have been doing some reading as to what one is supposed to do when it happens. I'll spare you the details, they aren't that interesting. What is interesting is the maximum payout for a single person, which is somewhere around $385 per week for 26 weeks for the state of Illinois. That amount would require a minor lifestyle change on my part. I'd definitely have to move to somewhere else in town, I'd probably cut cable, and there'd be much less going into savings. But it's certainly livable. The thing is at that price there is less motivation to find temporary work like at MikieD's. If the job won't net you that much in a week there's little reason to take the job. Anything less than $10 an hour won't do.

I'm not truly worried yet but yesterday my boss said it's okay to be so. Most likely the first course of action will be asking people to start using their vacation time. I have a month saved up so I'll probably be asked. Most fortuitously I recently got a customer needing my services for 2 weeks full time. That work started up yesterday. Unfortunately today I pretty much finished the work and tomorrow I'll most likely be done completely with it. The results the customer wanted just did not take nearly as long to acquire as expected. They wanted this long drawn out study done, but after the first batch of results came in they were such that the rest of the entire study could be solved for immediately and all that predicted future work became unnecessary.

As far as finding other jobs go today my friend called me up letting me know of a new job he just got. For about the past year he has been substitute teaching in Peoria. But being the summer time, that work has dried up and he's been looking for other things to do. Well recently he got a job as a balloon animal maker. He even has to join the Society of Clowns for insurance purposes in case a child swallows a balloon or gets latex poisoning. Right now he's in training and can make about 20 different things and can tell some jokes. Get this, the job pays $56 an hour! It's not steady, he only works about 5 to 10 hours a week, but after only 2 hours he's made more than his substitute teaching job pays all day. And it is livable. He's working under the 'master' who gets $75 an hour, and does it for a living and has been for many years now. In the meantime my friend is studying up to be an actuarist.

Only in America will you find a society that places a higher value on clowns than on teachers. And there you have it, if the times have gotten you in a rut, give the performing arts a go.