Many of you who have read my diaries know I lost my job of 25 years in January. I was awarded 20 weeks of unemployment. Well that ran out 2 weeks ago. For the first time in 30 years, I will not be bringing any money into my household. When I was 10 I begged my mom to let me sell greeting cards and stationary door to door in our neighborhood. Always supportive, she let me. For 3 years I made a few hundred dollars and had a regular clientele who would order Christmas cards from me every fall. Then when I turned 13 I was old enough to babysit. As the only teenager in a pretty big neighborhood I owned the market. Some years I made a few thousand dollars babysitting. When I turned 15, I begged my mom to take me to get a work permit so I could work with her at our local greeting card store. The first year, I made a whopping $4,000. I worked every afternoon after school and most weekends. The summer I graduated high school I applied at the local bookstore, my idea of a perfect dream job. Who doesn't want to work surrounded by thousands of great books. To my great surprise they hired me.
The next 25 years I went from a part time bookseller working my way through college to managing a million dollar Waldenbooks using my management degree I earned in college. I loved being in the book business and selling my favorite books and authors to my faithful customers. And then Borders made a horrible decision to close 200 stores and mine was one of them. We found out in November that we would all be unemployed in January. If we quit or got another job we would not qualify for severance or unemployment, so we all stayed until the last day. After 20 weeks of unemployment and 12 weeks of severance I received a letter explaining my unemployment was up. The lady in the office had no explanation of why I only received 20 weeks and no idea if the government would extend benefits. And that was it. I have been making my own money since I was 10 years old. In 3 weeks I will be 43 and for the first time in 30 years, I will have to ask someone else for money. Luckily, I have a wonderful husband who has a great job. He has been working in Virginia while we lived in Georgia. When my unemployment ran out we made the decision to relocate the whole family to Virginia. So for the first time in 4 months we are all living together under one roof. When we filled out the application for our lease, under occupation I put "homemaker". I know it seems silly but that really hurt me. It's not that I think homemaker is a bad thing. It's just not who I see myself as. But the great news is we are living in Northern Virginia and so far we love it. As hard as it was, I guess I should thank Borders. Without their decision we would never have been forced to make our decisions. And ultimately, my becoming unemployed was the final straw that finally got us out of Georgia. Here's hoping Virginia is the next step to a new wonderful life.