When the going got tough, Tania Khadder and John Henion got blogging.
After the co-workers lost their jobs with the San Francisco media company Current TV, they decided to vent their frustrations online. Welcome to Unemploymentality.com.
"We both got laid off together on the same day from the same company," Khadder says. "We thought, 'Why not do something other than complain to each other. Let's start a blog.' "
Now Khadder, 29, and Henion, 33, are part of what may be the economy's few growth industries: recession blogs. As The New York Times noted recently: "We are in the worst economic downturn of the Internet age, and bloggers are making the most of it."
Unemploymentality serves as a resource for everything from offbeat career advice (job fairs won't get you a dream job, but they could get you a dream date) to first-person journals ("Diaries of a Temp") to plain old bonding.
"We kind of see it as like a tongue-in-cheek look at the recession and at unemployment," Khadder says. "We're not covering hard news, really. Although, it is a serious topic, we're trying to make light of it and have fun with it."
Part of the fun of Unemploymentality comes from the bloggers' knowledge that, despite their hardships, they still have it pretty good.
"I think we definitely speak for a certain generation, almost a spoiled generation. And we're aware of that," Khadder says. "It's like, I might be broke, but I'm not in danger of becoming homeless because of it. It's more like for people in our generation, we're just spoiled that we can't believe that we have to go without our Netflix subscription."
Both Khadder and Henion have become minor pundits, appearing on National Public Radio and even entertaining a book offer.
Henion finds it all amusing.
"I kind of think of myself as the Happy Gilmore of writers," he says. "I'm a filmmaker posing as writer."
Henion contributed a multimedia documentary, "Salina Street," to Unemploymentality. It's about a neighborhood in Syracuse, N.Y., that's seen better days. And he recently has been getting some free-lance video work.
"Even if (our blog) does die off in a while," he says, "while I was unemployed it gave me something to do to highlight my toolbox."
The same goes for Khadder.
That's because an employer came calling. Khadder is now an editor for career-related Web sites.
Her hobby is now her job.
"Basically, I never thought that starting that blog would get me a job, but it kind of did in a lot of ways," she says. "Happy ending. (pause) So far."
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service www.scrippsnews.com)
Must credit St. Petersburg Times
Post new comment