How Writer Corey Levitan Survives Unemployment in Pandemic Times, Read and Repeat

by Corey Levitan, Special Correspondent

In 1988, I got accepted to NYU Law School. My future was set. I was going to be JFK Jr.’s classmate. I never knew exactly what I wanted to do for a living, but I knew journalists didn’t make one, and lawyers did. Besides, I could always do journalism as a freelancer, I told myself, because I wanted to never have to worry about money. There had to be SOMETHING in the law I liked as much as journalism. And how would I know if I didn’t go to law school and find it?

My student loans were approved. My parents paid the registration fee. My grandparents bragged about “my grandson the lawyer” at their retirement community clubhouse.

And then I got the call. It was from my childhood friend Steve. Our friend Chris was dead.

It was only six months since he was diagnosed with bone cancer. I knew he was at Sloan-Kettering, but couldn’t bring myself to visit, even when I accidentally walked by it once.

I didn’t want to see him like that. So I put Chris out of my head. I thought he had more time.

The funeral was open-casket. That terrified me. Chris, who was on our high school football team, was now almost a literal skeleton. When it was my turn to approach his coffin, he spoke to me. I heard his actual voice.

“What the fuck are you doing, Corey?” Chris’ skeleton asked me. “This could be you in six months. You’re a writer. Go be one.”

How am I surviving the coronavirus catastrophe when neither my wife nor I have jobs anymore and the rent is due?

By knowing that I did with my life what I wanted to do, not what I felt obligated to by societal pressure.

It has worked out so far, somehow, and somehow, I know it will continue to.

About Corey Levitan, Staff Writer

A native New Yorker, Levitan currently writes for La Jolla Light, San Diego and social media outlets. Formerly of Sin City, he penned an award-winning humor column “Fear and Loafing” for the Las Vegas Review-Journal that ran a record 176 times between 2006 to 2011. He has also written for Rolling Stone, New York Magazine, Gentlemen’s Magazine Playboy, and once served as Hollywood Correspondent for the New York Post.

[Screenmancer thanks this writer, ps, because we can’t afford his actual rates, so friend rates.]

# # #