And So it Begins… The Recession Lessons Road trip
Yesterday I hit the road for a week and will be dropping back by the blog with reports from the road. Now, originally this was to be the Recession Lessons Road Trip where I would visit several people who would have contributed their Recession Lesson stories to the blog for a chance to win awesome prizes like: 2nd hand t-shirts, an autographed picture of my dog, or maybe even a copy of Tania’s blockbuster holiday mix, ‘Slow Jamz 4 Mom.” We were to announce the winners of this contest on June 23rd, but guess what? We only received one contribution. One. And that contributor lives in D.C., which wasn’t even close to my route across country. So I’ve canceled the competition.
But as always, there’s a lot to learn from ones failure, whether that failure be your layoff or a sucky blog competition. In this instance I learned two things. First, I learned that I’m not very good at online promotion and using social networking tools to expand my reach while encouraging others to participate in a competition such as this. I chalk this up to the fact that, well, I generally find the labor involved in getting good at ‘social networking’ to be boring and narcissistic. So screw it. But more importantly, I learned that trying to get unemployed people to submit stories on their own volition is a lost cause. Next time I’ll offer a real prize or cash and see how that goes.
So without any direction from our readers, I’m left to wander the lower 48 on my own. I’ve decided to do the following 6-night tour while making my way to upstate NY where I will hang my hat for the month of July:
- Night One: Mesquite NV
- Night Two: Denver, CO
- Night Three: Wichita, KS
- Night Four: Memphis, TN
- Night Five: Louisville, KY
- Night Six: Cleveland, OH
Along the way I’ll be keeping my eye out for signs of the unemploymentality in all its grace and beauty. I’ll take pictures and videos to document it as much as possible and report back what I find.
However, if any of you should have any hot tips or know of places in or between these places that might make for an interesting Unemploymentality story please do give me your advice via the comments section of this post. Pretty please.
Stay tuned…
John, you’re bypassing Michigan, the state with the country’s highest unemployment rate! We’re just a few hours northwest of Cleveland. Visit us and say yes to Michigan! (Or you could just read my unemployment blog.)
Barack and I are very disappointed that you are bypassing our nation’s capitol. *teardrop*
Maybe people didn’t submit more responses, ‘cus there’s not a lot of us that have turned our unemployment into something positive? With me, at least, there’s a lot of things I have re-found in my life that I’m really happy about, and am starting to re-think my career (probably like everyone else), but maybe people are hesitant to say that they’re overcoming the adversity and flying high?
I’ve also noticed that there are less comments on the site now than before. What’s traffic been like? Are people going back to work, or just so deep in their unemploymentality that they aren’t reading unemployment blogs anymore?
Who knows.. but I wouldn’t blame yourself for it, John. And your idea reminded me, btw, of this book I just read called ‘What Should I Do With My Life’ by Po Bronson. He interviews all these people who struggle to figure out what to do with themselves – finding new careers, happiness, etc.
I hope you can use this trip to get some answers for yourself, and get some much deserved R & R.