Salon.com > Amy Gutman

Why I went public about my unemployment

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 00:01:00 +0000

Fifteen years ago, I stood alone outside a building on Manhattan's Upper West Side, staring at a second-floor window as my heart beat hard in my chest. It was my first AA meeting, and I knew that once I walked through those doors, things would never be the same. Once I said I was an alcoholic, I could never un-say it. I might drink again or I might not (though at the time, I found that hard to imagine), but whatever I did going forward, the context would have changed.

This scene came back to me earlier this month when my reflections on long-term unemployment began flying around the Internet, shared by friends on Facebook and Twitter, and then by friends of friends. In Salon, the piece carried the headline "Even Harvard Couldn't Protect Me," but in my mind I retitled it "The Essay Wherein I Out Myself as Being Unemployed." Since my last job ended, I'd grown accustomed to describing myself as a freelancer, which was true, but just not the whole truth. While I was indeed doing writing for hire, including some very cool projects -- a speech for a Harvard dean, essays for Salon -- the fact is these assignments didn't come close to covering my expenses.

My $10,000 storage unit mistake

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 00:30:00 +0000

Earlier this year, I cleared out a storage locker jammed with the accumulated overflow of almost two adult decades -- along with some boxes of college books tossed in for good measure. This was actually my second storage locker, the successor to the Manhattan mini-storage unit that I acquired to insert some breathing space in the Upper West Side one-bedroom I rented shortly after law school. It was intended as a temporary measure, a momentary regrouping. But eight years later, when I finally packed up, the unit was still mine.

This past April, another full decade later, I watched with anxiety as movers unloaded seemingly endless stacks of boxes to the basement of my new home in Northampton, Mass. Would my books have gathered mold? Would my clothing be moth-infested? Would my sturdy law school bicycle even be functional?

And in fact, there were some disheartening moments -- a silk dress passed down from my grandmother that had simply disintegrated -- but the main reaction as I unpacked: What a bunch of junk. Here's some of what I found: a desktop computer circa 1989, with its companion dot-matrix printer. A non-working halogen floor lamp. Cartons of music cassette tapes from bands I'd forgotten existed. Boxes of law school textbooks. (And yes, some of them were dusty with mold, but really, who cared?) The list goes on. And on.

Even Harvard couldn’t protect me

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 20:50:00 +0000

"We live in a society where it's hard to maintain self-respect if you don't have a job," Kwame Anthony Appiah, philosopher at Princeton, said in a recent radio interview, and I can certainly identify. All of my life I've been an achievement junkie. I have two Harvard degrees, practiced law at elite Manhattan firms, and wrote and published two novels, among other things. But of all my accomplishments, by far the most impressive is absent from my résumé: It's my more than two-year stint of job searching and unemployment.

If you've been unemployed you already know this, but if you haven't, here's a news flash: Coping with prolonged joblessness is hugely demanding. It requires deep reservoirs of fortitude, faith, patience, courage and self-control, traditional virtues generally accorded high regard in our nation's pantheon of values. Of course, we're a country that values hard work, and that's as it should be. But don't our values also dictate respect for the efforts of the struggling unemployed?