I Need a Job

"What's the WiFi password?"

Last week, I lost my job working as a content producer for an esteemed national media organization. Okay, it was a contract position and technically I didn’t lose my job, so much as my contract wasn’t renewed. And because I had some kind of forewarning, which I blithely shoved behind the “HAVE FUN” and “PAY BILLS” sections of my brain, I’m not particularly peeved at the organization. Perhaps my biggest mistake was being the caricature of a willfully naïve millennial.

The unending refrain of support from friends and colleagues and strangers and even, surprisingly, a few fellow writers is this: "Everything will be fine." Out of habit, I respond with “s’all good.” On some days that’s an affirmation. Other days, like when I read yet another Nate Thayer v. The Atlantic thinkpiece, that’s a lie.

It’s not the money: my working class family values dictate you find something, anything, when shit gets rough. I got my first job when I was 15, running games at Canada’s Wonderland, and have worked ever since, growing from part-time retail jobs to something resembling a vocation. So I’ll find a way to make ends, because I have to think about rent and a festering student loan and RRSP contributions to offset paying taxes on the middle class-y salary I’ve made in the past year.

At a point when I’m on the precipice of professional success, what’s most threatening is the prospect of an indefinable future. When I began writing professionally, I realized job satisfaction was a real thing. I’d potentially be the first person in my family to do what I wanted for a living. And what I’m faced with now is a reversal of that, something I never expected at a point where I am so close to my goal: a lack of choice.

The Globe & Mail reports that by 2028, the tail end of boomers will have reached retirement age, Generation Y will make up the bulk of the working population and the oldest millennials will start vying for corporate leadership positions. There are two assumptions made here: first, that retirement-age boomers will actually retire (these days more and more continue to work, often out of necessity, but effectively squatting in those positions), and second, that the workforce will be structured similar to today.

Journalism school is one of the biggest rackets going. (Disclosure: I have a certificate from a post-graduate journalism program). There’s no industry requirement for formal education in the field and, as my limited experience working and managing interns has shown, you either have the conviction to call up strangers on the phone, transcribe interviews, and kill yourself writing… or you don’t. Schools are opening new programs, luring master’s candidates and changing curricula to reflect the effects of digitization on the industry. But no one is out there saying, “Yo, this is not a reliable or particularly pleasurable path to gainful employment.”

Contemporary journalism is cloistered, deflating, decidedly unlucrative and markedly unglamorous. Long the realm of masochists and narcissists, it’s now even more wretched. There’s a price of entry (being financially unprecarious) and if you can cough it up, you’ll write for a pittance just because it makes you feel good. No one edits anymore. There are no jobs because the jobs that exist will be occupied ‘til death, and the scant offering of new jobs are picked up by people willing to work for even less or, as in my case, simply deleted when money runs tight. It is quicksand. It is Mordor.

The documenting narrative, which often comes from established or compensated journalists, is frustrating. These observations allude to the malignance but conclude that things will level out, or that there are opportunities because INTERNET, or that exposure equals some kind of tangible recompense. And then comes more news of lay-offs and wonky outsourcing decisions, magazine closures, and established writers not being able to profit off their own work. Um, actually I can’t think of the last good news I heard about journalism in North America.

“The creative landscape is starting to look more toxic than it's been in our lifetimes,” says Gawker’s Cord Jefferson, who writes often and beautifully on the millennial relationship to money. “So we trudge on, forgetting what a luxury it is to do what you want to do for a living rather than what you have to do to survive.

Over the past year, as publications continue to fold, downsize, or reveal themselves as an unreliable source of income I’ve pretty much eliminated the idea that if I grind hard enough as a freelancer, it’ll all work out. And this week, as I prepare to lose a source of income that allows me the financial freedom to write professionally, Jefferson’s words haunt my brain.

What happens when job opportunities are meager, for the people who theoretically comprise the future of the industry?

Previously from Anupa Mistry:

Canada Is Still Racist