Allie

 “We have a very misunderstood generation. I value service and honesty over money and status. It's so hard to carve out a meaningful path in a society that defines success by how many dollars I have in the bank when I measure my worth in a different way.”

Such are the words of Alli, 26. She has been living in Denver for the last two years, working for different non profit organizations. She is also an alumna of the Americorp NCCC program, in which young adults are placed in teams around the country work for groups such as Habitat for Humanity or the Red Cross. In addition, NCCC teams are often dispatched to aid recovery efforts for national disasters. Alli was stationed at the Americorp campus in Denver.

Alli became interested in service while at college. She went to school for political science, originally with the intention of becoming a lawyer.

“Life sometimes throws you curve balls and changes your perceptions about things, you know?” she remarks. She became more interested in giving back, to helping people and communities. This desire brought her to Americorp and here she flourished.

Living with ten others was difficult at first for Alli, a natural introvert. But she learned a great deal about the art of balancing social life with inner reflection. She learned how to deal with different and sometimes difficult personalities and became experienced in putting differences aside to get the job done.

She worked in the 9^th Ward in New Orleans helping a city still recovering from Hurricane Katrina. In Denver, she helped low income families fill out their tax returns. But it was her final deployment that moved her most deeply.

Alli arrived in Joplin, Missouri, in the summer of 2011, after a tornado had swept away a huge portion of the town. The destruction was devastating, but it was the people that affected her the most.

“It was so bittersweet. Here all these terrible things had happened but there were people from all over, all fifty states and even other countries, all just coming to help. It was beautiful. I would do if for the rest of my life if I could.”

Alli has volunteered to help victims of disaster long past her tour in the program. She helped with recovery from Hurricane Irene in the fall of 2011 and, this year, has volunteered her efforts to help those affected by the tornadoes in Oklahoma.

After Americorp, Alli moved back to New York for a brief time. She tried to work on career goals and building a future but quickly realized that in order to feel fulfilled she would have to change directions. She knew that if she wanted a job in the city - any city - she would have to move.

“I convinced a friend to come with me back to Denver.,” she says. “We packed a few bags and bought one way train tickets. We had no place to live but we weren't worried. We stepped off the train on a Thursday and by Friday we had signed a lease. We started our lives all over again, and we've built something pretty incredible out here.”

Alli found a job as a tax consultant with a company she had worked for during Americorp. Now she had come full circle, and was teaching the incoming Americorp members what she had learned just a year ago. But one job was not an option if she wanted to stay afloat. After tax season ended she took a job at a local pub and another at a non-profit. Alli found herself working from 7am to 10pm every day.

Alli was becoming frustrated.

“It's so hard to have a healthy work and life balance when you have to work so many jobs just to get by without feeling like you're getting anywhere.”

Alli wants more from her life. Her extensive experience with non-profits had inspired her to begin her own someday. She has just accepted a financial position at firm in Albany, and will be moving at the end of October. In addition to working as an analyst, Alli will also be assisting a friend with a new business venture. She is thrilled to be living so close to New York City, and eagerly looks forward to the day when she can fully immerse herself in an organization she truly believes in, like U.N. Women.

She is proud of what she has accomplished so far, and even more proud of her generation, despite what some baby boomers might say.

“We're a very optimistic generation,” she says. “I know so many extremely intelligent and innovative and talented people that want to leave the world a better way then they found it. We want to stop treating the symptoms of our society and cure the disease. We need to nurse our souls. It isn't a bad thing but I don't think its understood by other generations.”

Her dreams of starting her own non-profit are still in the ether, but she knows the direction she wants to take.

“I know I want to be an advocate for women or help them in some way. I don't know what that looks like yet but I'm excited to find out!”

Below is a video Alli created about her and her NCCC team's work in Joplin, Missouri.

Nicholas

What's your dream job?

Have you considered it? Are you working toward it? Does your passion for it drive you, consume your thoughts and your actions?

If you asked Nicholas, all of his answers would be a resounding yes.

Nicholas has been training with Victory Martial Arts since he was 13. Martial arts was a gateway for him to develop dedication, ambition, and discipline. By the time he was fifteen, he was assisting teachers and helping his peers to train. When he was sixteen, he experienced one of the most important moments of his life.

“I remember the day that my boss couldn't come in,” he says. “He gave me the keys and told me I had to open the place up. I went in and sat in the big man chair and just thought 'This is it. This is what I want to do.'”

He decided in high school that he would go to a local college and pursue a degree in mathematics. But this was ancillary to his true dream: opening up his own school and imparting his passion for martial arts to students both young and old.

Nicholas spent his final high school years balancing his AP classes with his constant training and teaching. If he was to become a great teacher, he had to become strong in both body and mind.

“I believe that life is about having a passion and a drive. I said that this is what I was going to do – every person who ever met me knew that this is what I wanted to do – and I put everything into it.”

At just 21 years old and fresh out of Stony Brook University, Nicholas saw his dream came true. He opened a new school under the Victory Martial Arts name and dived right in. Now at 26, he continues recruiting students, developing classes, and building a rapport with everyone that walks through the door.

For the younger students, classes aren't about just learning punches and kicks. He sits down with even the four year old students and asks them what they want to be when they grow up, what makes them excited, what they strive for.

“I had a kid who told me he wanted to be a dinosaur when he grows up. I couldn't tell him no! If he grows up to be a dinosaur he'll bite my head off!”

Nicholas tries to be a role model for his younger students, someone they can look up to, even talk through their problems with.

“Sometimes I feel like these kids are so underestimated. But they're amazing! I see their potential and I just want to show them how great they can be.”

For the adults in his school, Nicholas wants to create a safe place, where people who never would have crossed paths can become great friends through their shared love of martial arts. He strives to facilitate connections between his students and beams with pride when he talks about how he feels he has affected positive change in their lives.

“I love martial arts so much, it's taught me so much. Now I get to share it with all these different people and make a livelihood out of it! I don't work a single day in my life.”

But the constant physical exertion Nicholas puts himself through hasn't come without a price.

In 2006, right before he was supposed to complete the test for his first black belt, Nicholas noticed some pain in his knee. He struggled to ignore it but eventually had to visit the doctor. Not only was his ACL torn, the doctor couldn't even find it on the preliminary test. He tore his second ACL not long after, and has also injured a ligament in his shoulder.

The long recovery time was frustrating, but it also gave Nicholas time to think. As much as he loved martial arts, he knew he wouldn't be able to put his body through so much forever.

Luckily, a new avenue opened up for him almost by accident. Nicholas slowly learned about search engine optimization, and began implementing certain practices on his own school's website. In a few months, he no longer had to pay for Google placement and by the time the Regional Director of his school did a quick search, Nicholas' school was the number one result. Nicholas was hired to do the same for the rest of the schools in the region.

“I didn't really like the state the pages were in,” he says. “So instead I just decided to build them from scratch.” Through YouTube tutorials, manuals, and simple trial and error, Nick was building websites.

“One day I realized I was barely looking at the design page and just writing in source code. I don't even know how that happened, but it was an incredible feeling.”

His website and marketing ability has expanded beyond the school and he has decided to open his own private business instead of working freelance and relying on word of mouth.

Nicholas has begun ventures into real estate. He owns two houses and is in contract for a third. He buys in the Stony Brook area, renting out to students who want to live off campus. Just like in his school, he wants his tenants to look at his houses as a place where they can feel safe, welcomed, even part of a new family.

“I love the school – love every second of it. But I know that I want to do even more, something different. I'm just always trying to look at the bigger picture.”

Nicholas wants to keep buying and is now considering commercial real estate along with residential. At only 25 years old he owns and operates a martial arts school in, runs a website building and marketing business, and is looking to add to his real estate portfolio.

Nicholas doesn't wonder about his dream job, doesn't sit around building castles in the air. He combines his passion and ambition to forge an incredible life for himself that he is constantly looking to share with others. He inspires his students and his peers to strive for more than they have, to use what drives them to create and grow as people.

If you live in the Long Island area consider taking a class with him at Victory Martial Arts in Setauket. There are dozens of different classes for all age and experience levels.

James

“I have no control over my life situation right now and it is terrifying.”

James has a decent job. He has an apartment he shares with his girlfriend. He's going to grad school. He is doing everything that he is “supposed” to do.

And he feels trapped.

James is 23 years old and works as a teacher in the New York City Department of Education. He is employed through a teaching program that places teachers in low-income areas nationwide.

James went to school for teaching, but he made his college experience into so much more than mere pursuit of a degree. He became both a tour guide and an RA at SUNY Binghamton, and took personal pride in witnessing prospective students he had seen in the spring move into his building in the fall. James, along with several other students, founded a new club called Explorchestra, an orchestra that only plays music composed by the students. This club, which is still around and still exploring new forms of music today, has had a huge influence on the lives of its members.

“Many of the people who wrote music for the club had never composed before,” James says. “My one friend totally changed his life trajectory because of this club and became a Music Psychology major.”

James carries this love of music through his life, although its absence is agony.

“I haven't written a note in eighteen months and it's been awful.”

James became interested in the teaching program while in college, and applied as soon as he graduated in 2012. The program wanted to place him in Arizona, but when his mother was suddenly diagnosed with cancer, James chose instead to stay close to home, declining the offer. He took two part time jobs, both as an associate at a major pet supply store and as a teller in a local credit union.

“I used to work at a convenience store and I thought the worst smell was the garbage there,” James says. “It's not. The worst smell in the world is that ferret cage,”

In between the jobs, James had a great deal of free time. He filled it with creation. He wrote and recorded his eighth and ninth albums. These albums are dark, directly inspired by his experiences at the pet store. He succeeded in his personal challenge of writing one poem a day for an entire year and published a blog full of poetry. He continued his high school hobby of developing unique board and card games and testing them with his friends. These games were better, more refined than the ones he had created as a teenager and he wondered if he could build a future for himself using these little building blocks of creativity.

“Creation is my life blood,” he says. “Having no free time to create makes me feel unproductive.”

The second time he applied to the teaching program, they placed him in New York City. He took the job and moved with his girlfriend to their current apartment in the Bronx. They live near Fordham University, where James goes to grad school. But attending this school was not a choice.

“The program is great, I mean, they pay for 90% of your master's. But the school they chose is expensive and they only pay for as long as you stick with them. If I get kicked out or something happens and I have to drop the program, I'm suddenly unemployed and $40,000 in debt.”
New York is an expensive city to live in, and although he works full time he still hasn't saved much. Teaching is a job that he has to bring home with him, and he admits that sometimes, without his outlet of music or poetry, he lets the pressure get to him.

“I just feel like I need some free time back.”

Despite the difficulties, there is still creation. James finds time in between writing lesson plans and grading essays to work on building card and board games. He is starting a game company with friends from college. The have a website launch next month and are planning a Kickstarter to fund their first game in January.

He has also just returned from a reunion with many alumni of the Explorchestra in. Binghamton. They met with the current members to play music together. He is impressed with the direction in which the student composers have taken the club.

“One kid had this awesome hip-hop arrangement he was setting up,” he says with a smile. Seeing how something he created has blossomed and grown is nothing short of incredible.

James' career is looking up as well. Having already completed one year of teaching in a challenging environment, he is beginning this year with far more confidence and finds teaching much more enjoyable.

He is currently developing a game about medieval siege weaponry and cats. It is called 'Cataclysm' and features cat puns on every card.

You can find James' music and poetry at the links below, and as soon as the Kickstarter for his first game is up, you can bet we will let you know.

SoundDrawn

ItswhoIAMB

Ashleigh

What do you do when all the jobs in the career you've trained for dry up just as you're about to graduate college?


You say “screw it,” and start your own business.


But the road for Ashleigh, 26, hasn't been an easy one.


Like so many of us, college wasn't really an “if,” as it was a “when.” Beginning right out of high school, she wisely chose the college that would give her the best deal in terms of scholarships. It was 2006. The job market was good and the future looked bright for a graphic design major.

"I worked my butt off in school. I took extra classes every semester, interned, volunteered, and worked part-time.” So what if she had to work a part time job that barely covered books and expenses? Ashleigh believed that if she did good work in college, if she worked as hard as she could, then a job in a field she loved would be waiting for her when she graduated.

Then came 2008.

Lehman Brothers closed its doors. AIG did took a nosedive and the market plummeted. Businesses closed, people lost their jobs and no one was sure how long the difficulties would last. Ashleigh and her family were no different. Her mother was laid off and the income from her father's commission-based income plummeted. The future, once so clear, was now murky and threatening.


But she was not one to be shaken easily.


I decided to try my hand at being an RA my junior year,” she explains. “It had a paycheck and I figured I could handle it. They agreed to let me keep the part-time job, too.” She took on these two jobs on top of being the art director of the student paper and a 22 credit course load, the absolute maximum allowed.

Everyone has their breaking point. Ashleigh's was higher than most, but even she had to face that she was doing far too much. She suffered a breakdown and stepped down from the RA position to rest and recuperate, but of course, not for long. By the summer she landed an unpaid internship with a newspaper doing page design while still working her part time job to cover costs for next semester.

By graduation, it all seemed worth it. She graduated magna cum laude with a bachelors in art and two minors in English. These academic achievements, combined with her extensive job experience, created a resume that anyone would have been proud of.

“Ten years ago, I would have been set,” she says, ruefully.

Not one job prospect.

Ashleigh decided to return to school to earn a master's degree instead of waiting for the inevitable bills for her student loans to start coming in. “Since we figured we'd never pay off our loans anyway, it was a quick fix for putting off the bills,” she states, speaking of herself and many of those in our generation.

It was also around this time that she began experiencing several health issues. Back problems, problems sleeping, and of course no decent health insurance to go to the doctor.

But there was good news!

It was also during this time that she was married, and along with a brand new life with someone she loved, she was also able to finally get appropriate medical care through her husband''s provider. Unfortunately the outcome was not ideal.

"In the span of one year, I was diagnosed with sleep apnea, social anxiety disorder, fibromyalgia, two herniated disks, migraines, and a few other pains,” she says. “Nothing I have can be 'cured,' so to speak. All the treatments I have are therapies and I'll have to do them for the rest of my life. But it's like brushing your teeth. Everyone has to do it for their entire life and it just becomes a routine you don't think about.”

 Things have also settled down for Ashleigh financially. Although she and her husband still rely on a Christmas-Holiday-Birthday money emergency fund, life has become easier with two incomes and allowed her to break out of a stagnating corporate market.

 Between taking part time jobs that allow her to work around her medical issues, she has started her own business, CharmCat. Although she says that starting a business is difficult, and expensive to set up, Ashleigh enjoys the freedom it provides her. She designs, creates and sells beautiful wedding invitations and stationary that she can make on her own schedule, almost all of which are hand painted.

"Most of the painting is done at 12:30 in the morning while listening to some 90s alt,” she says with a laugh.

Please check out her beautiful artwork at the link provided below. You are not going to believe the amount of care and dedication that goes into these designs until you see them.

CharmCat

Kevin

Please click for hi-res.

These pictures are private property shared with consent of the artist. Any unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

VITAL INFORMATION FOR YOUR EVERYDAY LIFE

 I'm happy to announce that I have an update schedule. We will update with articles every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. On Sunday, we are going to do something special. It will be a no text art post, where we showcase an artists of our generation and the awesome work they do. It might be photos, watercolors, oils, textiles, sculptures, whatever, as long as it's awesome. If you would like to have your artwork featured on a Sunday post, please do NOT hesitate to contact us!

Todd

They're working long before any students arrive in school, and they'll be there long after the last one has left. They spend their days elbow deep in bleach, brooms, mops, and that crazy powder they pour on the ground whenever that sick kid throws up all over the place. They are the unsung heroes of the education system.

They are the custodians.

Todd has been hard at work as a custodian in the public school system for eight years. He's been bounced between the elementary and the junior high schools in his district because, as he put's it, "one of the worst parts of the job is that they can put you in a new position whenever they damn well please.”

For a long while, from the time he left home at 18 until about 2005, Todd made his own way in the world. He worked dozens of odd jobs in addition to cleaning up the buckets of finger paint and juice stains that are so prevalent in elementary school classrooms. He's been a delivery driver, stock boy, clerk, cashier, and, of course, the guy you call when your computer is doing the weird thing again. He spent the time in between jobs at several local colleges, trying to earn enough credits to attain his degree in IT.

In 2009, realizing that although he had a good job he wanted more, Todd signed up to join the U.S. Military as an airman. He began basic training in October of 2009, eager to begin a new chapter in his life. Unfortunately here too, he met with plain bad luck. An injury sustained during basic training revealed an underlying medical problem that forbade him from serving. He was let go from the Air Force and returned to his job in the school.


With rent, food, tuition, gas, and the lost months given to the Air Force, there wasn't much room to save up for a future. But Todd was always thinking ahead. He dreamed about flipping houses in another state with his brother, or opening a dojo somewhere in the Hudson Valley. He was and remains a dedicated man, having the work ethic and drive to do whatever he put his mind too.

All of that changed in 2011, when he married the love of his life, a beautiful artist. Things for the pair changed even more several months later when they welcomed their son into the world.

Todd is a family man now, and has begun to look beyond his work in the schools to pursuing a career in the corporate world as an IT specialist. Although his background in computers is sound and his ability with them extensive, companies are reluctant to hire someone who doesn't have that lovely slip of paper with a B.A. or B.S. on it that most of us are still paying for.

Todd stays positive throughout it all. "I see both sides to the degree thing, as far as employment is concerned. But a degree doesn't actually show how much knowledge someone has or even how smart some one is. It just evidence that shows how much work someone is willing to put in to attain something. Not having a degree doesn't mean not having work ethic. It just means you don't have that evidence, that proof of work ethic.”

 He's determined, he's got the know how and he has that ethic. Now it's only a matter of time.

Margie

You have a B.A. in communications. You've graduated from a fantastic university with distinction and gained a Masters in Fine Arts. You're well spoken, intelligent, and have had your poetry featured in an acclaimed online community.

But every prospective employer only sees your wheelchair.
Such are the difficulties that Margie, a 29 year old graduate from Hofsta University with cerebral palsy, faces every day in her quest for employment.

Margie attended the Henry Viscardi school, a school for students with physical disabilities, from sixth grade until her graduation in 2004. She excelled in her classes, made lifelong friends, and formulated her plan for continuing her education at Dowling College. She dreamed of becoming a radio personality, and completed her first college experience with a Bachelor's in communications and a minor in English. Due to complications arising from back problems during these years, Margie was unable to work a part time job and go to school. But she wasn't worried.

“I thought if I got a good education and put together a solid resume based on that, then my lack of work experience wouldn't really matter that much,” she says of her time in college.

But it was also during this time that Margie stumbled across her first solid barrier: transportation. At her radio internship with a local station, Margie was put on phone and office duties. She watched other interns attend different events and grow their name, but due to the fact that she does not drive she was unable to join them.

“I didn't much want to do radio after that.”

One professor at Dowling, a superlative educator who has been a driving influence in many students' lives, pushed her to go to grad school. Margie, deciding that the job market wasn't that great anyway, went to Hofstra to focus on her poetry. She graduated in December of 2013, and has been trying to find a job ever since.

Margie reports that this is a common problem among her friends with physical disabilities.

“We're no different than anyone else,” she said. “We want to work, to contribute. One of my friends has a degree in teaching and can't even get a subbing job because half the schools that call her aren't accessible. We were so naïve when we graduated high school.”

Despite the difficulties, Margie is determined not to be deterred. She spends her days scouring the internet for possible employment, babysitting her adorable nephews, and making connections in the job market. She is also attending physical therapy to develop her muscles and no longer be restricted to her chair. She brainstorms ideas for new poems and stories, but admits “My confidence has gone down a little” in terms of her ability.

We have several links below to her wonderful poems. If you read nothing else today, please check out her prose piece, “Letter to My Younger Self.” If it doesn't affect you in some way, I'd suggest contacting the police immediately because your soul is missing.

Letter To My Younger Self


Margie's poems featured on GimpGirl

Emily

No future comes with a guarantee. After three years of attending
Five Towns College as a film student, Emily learned in the summer
before her last semester that the college had fired everyone in her
major's department, would lose its accreditation, and was on the
brink of dissolving her entire program. The reality turned out to be
somewhat less apocalyptic and she succeeded in earning her degree
despite the fact that not a single educator graded or even looked at
her final project. But don't worry, the College still charged her for
the full semester as if no debacle had occurred.

Now a year out of college finds Emily working freelance jobs, as
most members of the TV and film industry do. Sometimes these jobs are
paid but most are not, and so Emily works two additional jobs. She is
a waitress at a diner on the Nautical Mile and a prep tech at a
camera rental company in New Jersey.

Yes, New Jersey. Her four and a half hour long commute features
cars, trains and buses and begins at 6am. She returns home by 8pm, if
she is lucky, giving her just enough time to eat dinner, shower and
go to sleep. She'll have to do it all over again tomorrow.

“I get two paychecks a month, and one of them just goes right
back into public transportation and half of the other goes into my
student loans” she reports. When asked if her job would give her
any sort of compensation for her long travel time, she laughed.

Somehow, Emily still finds time to create and contribute to funny,
well written, professional, and original content. She has
credits as both writer and producer of the web series Tiny Office.
Emily is also a member of the
the Thursday Shoots production company which has put out several
quality short films every year for the last three years.

Emily is hoping that her financial woes will end soon. She looks
forward to the day where she can join her local 600 camera union,
giving her a guaranteed wage and benefits. Unfortunately, the test
she must pass comes with a price. This price, combined with the one
time initiation fee, comes to thousands of dollars.

“There's a payment plan,” she says with a shrug.


Emily's work can be found on Thursday Shoots' Youtube channel, but
we have featured here the very first episode of her series, Tiny
Office.

The Project

You've heard it all before. They're lazy. They live at home at 25. They're not doing anything with their lives. They call us spoiled. Entitled. Too wrapped up in our phones to know what's going on in the world.

 I'm pretty sick of it and I know that you are too.

 This project is devoted to busting the myth of the "Lazy Millenial." To that end I'll be featuring profiles, articles on businesses, even art portfolios, all dedicated to the work that we are doing and just how hard it is.

 Are you working two or three jobs while staring at your mountain of college loan debt? Or maybe you still live at home because you can't afford to both move out and eat. Maybe you started your own business or work outside of conventions in order to both provide for yourself and make yourself happy. We want to hear from you! Send us a message in the sidebar telling us why what you do is important. If we dig your story, we will contact you via email.

 Let's build up some legends and dynamite some myths together.