123 Good Things about Unemployment

123. It makes you feel good to read books that feature characters with worse luck than you have. I read The Natural Laws of Good Luck: A Memoir of an Unlikely Marriage by Ellen Graf. The story includes fire, unemployment, loneliness, betrayal, isolation, car accidents, financial strain, disappointment and serious illness. And it is all true. I feel better already.

122. Laughter. Happy World Laughter Day! According to the Laughter Yoga folks, laughter will promote world peace. I agree. If we are all laughing, it seems unlikely we will kill each other. Here is a video I guarantee will make you laugh: http://www.youtube.com/v/UjXi6X-moxE&hl=en  I found it on their website.

121. May Day. When I was a kid, we made baskets from construction paper, filled them with lawn flowers and bush blooms, and brought them to neighbors. May Day is celebrated as International Workers Day or Labor Day in many countries. Today in the U.S., Mayday is a distress call from the unemployed. According to the Pew Fiscal Analysis Initiative, 23% of the 15 million unemployed Americans have been jobless for a year or more. That is 3.4 million people, about the population of Connecticut, Oregon or Oklahoma. According to that great resource Wikipedia, students at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland celebrate today by running naked into the North Sea at sunrise. Sounds good to me, as long as there is some snuggling after that cold plunge.


\\\ For Good Things numbered 111 through 120, see 120 Good Things about Unemployed posted April 29, 2010.
For Good Things numbered 101 through 110, see 110 Good Things about Unemployment posted April 16, 2010.
For Good Things numbered 1 through 100, see 100 Good Things about Unemployment posted April 3, 2010. ///