Getting through Christmas

Christmas is less than two weeks away, and while I think I have the holiday spirit and truly enjoy Christmas, this year is obviously a bit of a downer. Not from the standpoint of having family and friends around, but from the "spend, spend, spend" mantra of Christmas in America.

I've done minimal shopping and I don't plan on doing much. Normally by this time I've bought many gifts online and have contributed to the economy. But without a job and with unemployment benefits to expire for me in less than two months, my mind isn't so much on the holiday as it is on finding a full-time job and being able to pay the bills. I'm still enjoying the Christmas season, but that nagging feeling is always in the back of my thoughts.

I can count on one hand the number of job interviews I've had since being laid off in June, and I'm optimistic that more will be coming. I hate looking at a calendar and seeing that with two weeks left in the year, it's unlikely I'll fulfill my goal of having a full-time job by then. I don't expect employers to be rushing to fill vacancies during Christmas week or soon thereafter.

For the first time since in a long time, I'll have the entire Christmas week, and the week after, off. My daughter will be off for all of that time too, and my wife will be off for a few days, so I'm looking to make the best of it and enjoy the time off.

Due bills

Oct. 1 is almost here, and that means two things to me: The mortgage is due and I'm a year older. I'll talk about the added year on another day; it's the mortgage that has me more worried, as I'm sure it does many Americans.
As I've said earlier, the severance from work is now gone, and while unemployment checks continue arriving (although there was a hiccup last week), my part-time work isn't about to pay the bills. We're not in danger of foreclosure so far, but I wonder and worry about finding steady employment after seeing our checking account so low and payday for my wife not until the end of the week.
One question I've raised at the Job Connections meetings I go to and when I meet other unemployed people, is how they do it, how they keep their financial house in order. I'm sure there are daily stories out there to be told, if only a publication wanting some journalistic scrutiny and insight into these tales would pay me to tell them. I'm not talking a "Grapes of Wrath" story, but the daily life stories such as in the excellent book "Nickel and Dimed."
I'm now reading Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and have always found such nonfiction amazing reading. Newspapers have told some of the stories of people affected by the sour economy (Where's my bailout?), but not as much as I'd like to in a book, much like Barbara Ehrenreich has done. Now I just need to find someone to pay me to do it, because the bills keep coming.