unemployed, and staying that way

My friend Amy once said that she can’t be friends with people who don’t have at least one of the following: a job, a marriage, or kids. I joked that, as an unemployed grad student, I better hang on to my man so we could keep being friends.  I guess I better keep working on my marriage, because after 6 months of unemployed grad student life, my husband and I have decided that I’m not actually going to be getting a part time job soon.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that being able to do without a dual income is a luxury. I have a BA in English and political science, and while I often joke that this means I’m basically qualified to answer phones for a living, it’s actually mostly true. Meanwhile Jon is a doctor in a fellowship, and while his salary is not yet one of those ridiculous doctor’s salaries, he has the ability to pick up moonlighting work at an hourly wage I’d get only if I started selling my body on the street.  He can make in one day on a moonlighting shift what I’d make in 10 days if I picked up a MWF gig. I still can’t believe anyone is willing to pay him that much to do anything, but I’m totally grateful that he can pick up extra work and make up for the lack of me having a steady income.

While our budget is certainly tighter than it was when I had a full time job and wasn’t in grad school, we’ve finally figured out how to live within our new means.  And while right now we don’t have the money to give all the awesome causes we care about the support we wish we could, we’ve realized that I do have one very valuable thing: time. I have the ability to really give my time in ways that are more valuable than what I’d be doing if I got a p/t job: working retail for $10 an hour. I’m super excited about it.

This means I can spend entire afternoons volunteering at homeless shelters, or drive my friend McKinley to job interviews, or offer babysitting services to friends who really need it.  Our church is currently dreaming of rehabbing a new space and starting an urban garden, and, with years of weed-pulling in my parents’ gardens and tons of walls’ worth of painting experience, I can totally offer my services to make those dreams a reality.  I’d even love to put my experience as an administrative assistant to use with a local organization that needs some office help but can’t afford to hire a full time staffer, or lend my services as a writer to a nonprofit that would like to have a blog, for example.

So, I’m putting all this out here not because I want to brag about how I don’t have to get a job, but because I know many folks reading this have connections to local causes and organizations that might need my time. I’d love some ideas.