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When one's life is busy and you feel like all you do is run from one thing to the next, it is easy to forget that for lots of people that merry-go-round life has come to a sudden and unwanted halt. I keep meeting them in the laundry room of my building, as I help at a church event, and the numbers do not grow smaller but larger.So, it seems for an increasing number of people right here in my building, in my neighborhood, the reality of joblessness is more than a news item but a daily fact of their new life. They do not like it.
While I was on the road, I met a lot of kids who worked in motels or as waiters in chain restaurants. They were not happy either. I asked them why they did not leave and most of them said things like, I am too close to my mother to leave her here alone.
But the despair and the depression all around them was so great that at times I would walk out of a restaurant rather than be with such sad people.
I was happy. I enjoy what I do. I travel and meet people and talk to people about the things I love best--books, publishing and how the world of the corporate media has got to change.
But I am often thinking about those sad kids who wake up every morning to make coffee for the travelers, clean up after their breakfasts, answer the phones and try to stay awake even in the middle of the day.
They are bored. When I ask about their other options, like college, they say they were terrible students and hated school.
Watching young people already feeling trapped by their lives when they are just beginning made me think about what could we do to help change that.
I know that Sullivan Street Press is not a messianic cult trying to scoop up all the youth and give them a new life. We are a business with a sound foundation and a number of good principles holding us in place. But I know how to help these kids do something other than wait on tables, make beds and be miserable. They too can start their own companies, or they can hook up with companies like ours. There are skills they can learn that will make their lives more their own. And they can help their communities begin to prosper again.
Does that sound nuts? No, it is necessary.
In the next installment of this diary I will go into greater detail about what it takes to turn a very boring job into one that is quite exciting. For those who are now unemployed right here around me, I want to say to them, if you love books, give me a call, or write to me, we can put you to work very soon, in fact, we are working right now to find the means to set up this whole program on a nationwide basis.
