Meeting up with neighbors in the hallways of my building, I begin to realize just how many people right around me are unemployed. It takes its toll as one person describes sinking into alcoholism and the long climb back. Well, we have jobs for those who love books. We are here to help and to help those who publish as well.
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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.
Authors Bio:Deborah Emin is the founder of the publishing company, Sullivan Street Press (www.sullivanstreetpress.com). She is also the impressario of the Itinerant Book Show as well as the program director of the REZ Reading Series in Kew Gardens, NY. Her novel, Scags at 7, is back in print as well as available as an e-book from Sullivan Street Press. In addition to writing for OEN, Deborah has a blog on the Sullivan Street Press website where she writes about her experiences on the road, i.e., writing about anything that has to do with the Itinerant Book Show. She is currently at work on Scags at 18, due out fall 2010. And she travels back and forth to Cedar Rapids, Iowa where she is writing a book about the aftermath of the 2008 flood there. To keep up to date with all she is involved in, please go to her website www.deborahemin.com