Unemployed Writer Needs Work: pronto

It's going on thirteen months now. The non-profit foster kid agency went bankrupt and as its arts and education program director (in the midst of a city also gone bankrupt in a state teetering on the edge of its own financial ruins) I haven't found a suitable replacement job. The bitch is that it isn't about matching a salary. It's about quality of work. That is, doing what I am most qualified to do in the world--somewhere it is needed and necessary. What I have found, after thirteen months is this: in the middle of a very adventure-filled life; mostly spent in the company of brilliant people, interesting kids and a world of hurt humans; I discover that I can't find a job that can make use of my expertise. What the Hell is going on in America?

The "news" blasted in our public venues promises "recovery". The new president cries for people to dig deep; to look for problems with an eye on solutions; to make sacrifices for the good of those at risk. Well, President Obama and Co., here I be. I've been the Head Teacher of a university lab school for over twenty years--then that program changed directors and went under; I've worked with teen-aged hustlers in Hollywood as a street counselor, when the AIDS epidemic first hit; I've been a speechwriter for Democrat Sissy Farenthold, from Texas, and the first woman president of Wells College, in New York; I've published three novels, countless short stories, articles and reviews on everything from LGBT homeless youth to women's music over the past four decades; I've designed stained glass windows; I've had paintings in exhibitions and private collections from here to Europe; I've ghost written articles for politicians and book reviewers too busy to read the books they were being paid to review; I've illustrated underground textbooks for homeschoolers; I've given poetry readings coast to coast; I've run writing workshops for teens and adults and seen many of my students get published and begin their own forays into the world of writers; I've been a social worker and counselor with recovering people for thirty years and stand on my own 23 years of sobriety; now, most recently, I'm collaborating on a metaphysical book with my old meditation teacher and a screenplay biopic about a famous queer psychotherapist from the Human Potential Movement. Yet I can't find a job, anywhere, that makes use of any of these skills.

Now, I'm a blogger. So, America, who needs me? I'm here. Ready. Able. More than willing.
And funny as Hell. Trust me.