Advice for Day 99: Unemployment is a state of mind

My 100 days are up. I'm officially living in that scary world of no health insurance with only the faint Obama-colored glimmer of hope for universal health care in my future.

But honestly my lack of health insurance isn't what is freaking me out. It is my lack of life insurance; lack of foresight about what I want my life to look like.

100 days ago i told myself i just needed a gulp of faith to wash away the shiver of fear. That gulp of faith fueled my way to Chicago but I'm afraid, I'm not sure if I have enough of the magic confidence elixir left to get me through actually living a life in Chicago.

But then again i remember my journalism yoda telling me to just fake confidence like it's my job, because right now it is. Unemployment is really just a state of mind that only influences the real world if you let it.

So my red hair may be fading, my confidence a little weak but my hair still glows in the red and a stiff drink of faith is lined up at the bar around the corner.

To see me tackle unemployment in the "big city," check out my new blog at www.bigchitownliving.blogspot.com.

Advice for Day 93: Careers End, Careers Begin

With this year's glowing ball inevitably smashing into '09, came not only headaches of hangover's future and blurred facebook pictures to be untagged but also the sloshed start of my new career in Chicago and the sober stop of my father's 36-year-long career with his appraisal company. Both are to be expected, but i never realized how important his end would be to my beginning.

My father is a man of his generation, a man of good hard work, a man whose life for better or worse was often defined his job. My father is also no fool and knew that he could not escape the gentrification of the old boy's club type private companies; he knew that even after 36 years, he could still be replaced by someone 36 years younger who would work for half of what he had rightfully earned; he knew loyalty, dedication and missed piano recitals does not equate to a steady job in a shaky economy. And he was right. On Jan. 1st he was "laid off" with 4 weeks of insurance and 10 weeks severance pay.

And a day later, he sat in his home office, smoking his pipe drinking Powers Whiskey and packing up his office supplies to ship to Chicago with his daughter.

He was calm and looked happy, not glazed over whiskey happy, but moving-on-without-regret happy. According to my mother for the past decade or so, most Mondays she would hear a muttered but conclusive "I quit" come from the shower where my father was contemplating his work week. But he didn't quit; he continued to provide for his family the only way a middle class white collar man knows how, by listening to Rush Limbaugh in the car on the way to work and having a glass of Powers after work. He managed until the clock ran out and that shiny fragile ball came crashing down into '09.

But like all things inevitable- the falling ball of new year's eve, the hangovers of new year's day and the start and stop of new careers- he, we, managed and will manage with a little talk radio, a little more whiskey and a lot of hokey family love.