Rewiring
Pandemic Diary VI
May-July 2020
We were always working. Whenever we were not traveling to or from an art festival one or both of us was in the studio producing more art jewelry for the next trip. We adopted the rodeo slang term "go-'round" (go around) as in we were working for the next go-round coming up in a couple weeks. The rodeo expression literally meant "rodeo event" was the go-'round. Garth Brooks uses the expression in his famous song, “Rodeo"*. Well that's what it felt like.🐴
Working for the next go-'round with all the preparation, trials, troubles, wounds, repairs, broken equipment, and paying bills out of our event earnings. A bit like rodeo except without the Brahma bulls, horses, and cheering crowds. Nevertheless, we often felt a kinship with the other road warriors sideline by a military grade virus.
But the world had changed. We were all out of work: artists, rodeo cowboys, preachers, street vendors, event planners, food and beverage services, and anyone else whose job it is to make the world a worthwhile place to live. The people who created things or supplied a bit of diversion in troubled times were all out of work, sidelined as "non-essential workers". What a kick in the groin while we were already down.
Besides learning about the AE&R sector of the economy I have learned what a "gig worker" is. Planned but intermittent employment or working for a specific purpose but without a contract. Various sources report that although gig workers may have high levels of flexibility and autonomy but these jobs generally confer few employer provided benefits and workplace protections. Also the line between the terms "employee" and "employer" is blurred. So that legal definitions have little or no meaning in terms of the Labor Department resulting in low pay, social isolation, working unsocial and irregular hours, overwork, sleep deprivation, and exhaustion.**
The key part is, "...low pay, social isolation, working unsocial and irregular hours, overwork, sleep deprivation and exhaustion." Yes this is the life of an artist but I did not know we were "gig" people until the epidemic hit. Nor did I feel particularly deprived nor did I really complain until the global governance pulled the rug out from under us.
We had a lot of things in common with the gig worker but we are also in a profession and have a government employment code and in the range of numbers 7115xx there you find various artist professions listed. So we still didn't fit because now we were a "professional+gig worker". (Yike! that might be a non-sequitur) The virus has placed us in a position where we have to conform to something other than Art Festival Artists to fit into a societal slot in order to beg for money. Another revelation was finally dawning on me. This is how the "system" subtly dehumanizes us.
We were always working. But now were were not. At least not working events so what to do? I saw a door of hope slightly ajar down a dark corridor, was I seeing an illusion? It was not a corridor at all it was the rabbit-hole known as internet sales.
We had an internet presence for many years and the sales were at best marginally poor. Whether website sales or an Etsy store or selling on Facebook it is all the same principle. Drive as many people to your page and hope for the best. The hype is glamorous and encouraging explaining that there are millions or billions of people online waiting to buy your unique product. True if you can get them to come to your store.
So we reworked and tweaked our online store with enticing offers. Us and millions of other unemployed people were doing the same thing. The already glutted micro-business internet market got much bigger with the onset of lock-downs. There were legions of sellers desperate for a few bucks to come to them in this time on global need.
Big retailers can pour millions of dollars into marketing to boost their clicks and drive people into their online outlets burying smaller competitors. However when it came to the mom-and-pop shops of the world one is left to old formulas of contacting friends and family who still have jobs and rehashing mailing lists regardless of how threadbare they might be.
I scoured our data base looking for prospects even working over lists of postal addresses we had shipped special orders to over the years. I made actual post cards (see image #1)and we sent out hundreds and also resized the images and used them for a blizzard of emails (image #2).
We did make some sales with this process. Mostly people we knew but also a few new customers and we were able to supplement our pandemic-gig-artist-nonstandard-unemployment compensation stipend supplied by a reluctant government. We were very grateful to all those current and former clients who purchased from us.
Unfortunately it was not enough to fill in the already existing hole of not having any income as a result of events and the hangover from a sketchy Winter season. The evidence was all around me in my own life but listening to the stories from people trapped in the same way we were or seeing the shuttered businesses up and down familiar roads, wondering what happened to the owners, managers, and employees of those once vibrant establishments.
Government Intervention
For much of my adult I had attempted to keep involvement in government programs to a minimum even though at times we were left with no other options. Nonetheless, getting involved with government was a fact of life. Through taxes and regulations and simple mismanagement the authorities and principalities had in some fashion milked money from us, all of us, in both noticeable and occult means. Controlled by the Feds bank and stock disasters sucked the value out of our investments. The promise of land ownership was an enticing siren song that was controlled by government taxing authorities, contracts, and developers. These were not sins of the free market but contrivances of the elites.
These concepts might have been common knowledge theories but when demonstrated on the blackboard of your life it became first personal then terrifying. To watch the crumbling of society all around you and find that you were a target is a uniquely illuminating experience.
If nothing else fear breeds a reevaluation of priorities. The idea of self esteem becomes more abstract day by day. One failed experiment after another drives a dread that converts into desperate actions. I was there. Not quite ready to rob a convenience store but I was somewhere in the mindset that propagates such notions.
Within the daily storm of information I began to see more and more references to programs designed to "help" small business stay afloat. Private grants and low interest loans some targeted specifically to artists and craftsman but most were for hardship cases. I began to apply for any that seemed vaguely applicable to our situation although even at the time it seemed like a fool's errand. Nevertheless, I pressed myself to the battle of paperwork and researching answers to a hailstorm of questions.
Unfortunately I was correct in almost all cases. I was not in the lucky category of "essential worker" who had drawn the favorable card which allowed one to receive a salary but not travel to work. If not in that golden zone then one was cast adrift in the sea of bureaucratic paperwork, rooting for scraps. The card we received was the 7 of Spades, reversal of fortune.
First the unemployment compensation for gig-temps-event workers who had been ruined by Covid and now government loan programs. There were several loans being groomed for use in the pandemic situation. I was rejected by all the private foundation plans evidently because we could not check enough social boxes and also some other programs but after talking to a banker I knew it came down to something called the Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL) program.
According to government sources these are loans "...available and provide working capital to help small businesses, small agricultural cooperatives...(and) nonprofit organizations of all sizes to meet their ordinary and necessary financial obligations that cannot be met as a direct result of the disaster." In other words chewing gum stuck in a hole where water is gushing from the dam.
Up to this point I had only thought that I was destined to see Wonderland with Alice going down a rabbit-hole. However, I would soon find out what a real U S Government certified rabbit-hole was all about.
*https://www.lyrics.com/lyric/2042859/Garth+Brooks/Rodeo
**Wood, Alex; Graham, Mark (August 8, 2018). "Good Gig, Bad Gig: Autonomy and Algorithmic Control in the Global Gig Economy"
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