In America, people’s work, it becomes a part of their personality.

And certainly in DC.

The most common question that you get in DC when you’re meeting a stranger is what do you do?

Where do you work?

A man needs a purpose in his life.

Women obviously too.

But as a guy, I’m saying, you know, man has to have a purpose.

You know, one of his purposes is, you know, to do work or do something that changes the world.

And right now I am in a limbo.

I need to tell you something.

There’s a kid in my class who everybody hates.

His name is Joel.

He’s mean.

Sally.

Don’t be shit talking people behind their back.

Okay.

Yeah.

He’s really mean to everybody.

Well, if you shit talk [indistinguishable] No.

Well, you know, other people have drugs and hookers.

We have five kids.

Oh, you know, it’s... It’s a different lifestyle.

I always wanted a lot of kids.

It was like, I’m either going to be a nun or I’m going to get married and have a million children.

Like, there is no in between.

He was like, no, I want two.

And I’m like, yeah, how about seven?

And he was like four.

I’m like, I can agree to four.

And then when my sister passed away, we got number five.

Bye.

I love you.

I only know one person who’s orange.

Sally, we’re not going to talk about it.

It’s about kids.

It’s not about us.

I mean, we’re adults.

Yeah, we can figure it out.

And the money can figure we can figure out money.

Yeah.

The paycheck isn’t, um.

And just watching him, how it affects him not having that meaningful outlet that way that he could contribute, um, left him a bit lost.

So we try to find things to do.

It’s like, oh, okay, how about you take the kids to the dentist for me?

You can do the mornings getting them off to school.

Um.

Yeah, I can cook dinner, you know.

Yeah.

Trying to find meaningful ways to stay busy.

That’s, you know, you’re still contributing.

You’re still valuable.

You’re still important.

Even if even if you’re not allowed to go and do your job, you’re still important.

Thank you.

You’re welcome.

[Elmo singing] I was doing that stuff before, but she is the primary parent.

So, you know, the burden with kids was on her.

But because right now, when I paid administrative leave, now I’m doing this.

Oh.

[indistinguishable] Because.

Yeah, they’ll eat it.

And this what I got for you?

[Elmo singing] Yeah.

Your life is hard.

Yes it is.

Thanks very much.

And I got this for kids.

The biggest worry is definitely about the insurance benefits.

Yeah.

Um, so one of our kids has drug resistant epilepsy.

Um, and in order to keep her alive, we need to give her her medication.

The risk of her missing some doses is terrifying and is very real.

So we we worry a lot about that.

I think we worry more about that than anything else.

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Are those fun?

[laughter] [indistinguishable] [laughter] We have a dead flamingo.

Yeah it’s still there.

Yeah the flamingo is still there.

And yard baby is still there.

Yeah.

Look there’s five.

One for each kid.

Got to bury them now.

I want skeletons.

Yeah take your skeleton.

You ready?

Ouch.

Or did he bite you?

Yeah he’s going to bite me.

Say mommy’s skeleton.

Mommy’s skeleton.

Rawr.

We cannot really have that flowers over there because our dog is digging them out.

So we decided just to have a little cemetery over there.

Tamaki having so much fun burying stuff.

And then the dog, when he’s, you know, digging up something out, he will be literally digging out bones.

This is going to turn into a ghost town.

I mean, that’s what we’re expecting because most people in DC have, you know, work in these government jobs.

And if they’re laid off, what are they going to be doing?

We’ve been getting a lot of job inquiries here and a lot of them are from people either from the education department, health Department.

It’s very sad to see.

We’re able to hire one, which was nice, who had some florist experience.

How many people are we going to be able to hire?

You know, especially when there’s no sales.

People are being very careful with their money for very obvious reasons.

They’re going to, you know, prioritize necessities and flowers is isn’t one of them.

You know, it’s a luxury.

My father is from Gaza.

My mother is from 1948.

Um, I come from a very well-educated family, but I get to live, like, as if my parents didn’t do anything with their life.

As if they never worked hard to build a future for us.

Again, when you come from a really bad situation upbringing, there’s not really much that can intimidate you.

You know, it’s like, what’s the worst going to happen?

Well, you know, you’re gonna you’re gonna pick yourself up again.

You’re going to find a way to pick yourself up again.

Even the streets are empty.

There’s not a single person on the street.

Oh, here is one.

I probably shouldn’t be saying that, but I’d like to see an uprise.

I think Americans deserve a lot more.

So this feels personal.

This feels like an attack.

He got on his administrative leave, and so he had just gotten settled, and he became an official federal employee, which is really, really difficult to do.

It takes years for a lot of people.

Most people.

I had to change jobs.

And then Maxam is on administrative leave.

And now it’s not too sure, we’re just not government employees and family members.

The federal employees.

We’re people and we have a full, full life just like anybody else.

As the government gets smaller or whatever the plan is, I’m not sure what the plan is.

It’s just to remember that these are people’s lives and that people have moved from all across the country to come to DC, to work, to to be a public servant without this guiding light.

Why are we really here?

Do we love Washington DC so, so much?

Is this the right place?

Is this a forced change in our life?

So.

I do love my own company.

Um, I don’t like commuting long distances.

Sometimes I meditate because, you know, I kind of just zone out.

I pray.

And think about, you know, my day.

I try to de-stress.

We have pushed these these interests across the entire world.

And people in charge of spreading democracy and capitalism and free free markets and free press and human rights and women’s rights and then LGBTQ rights.

You know, just the right to to live, to not be killed or criminalized just because you’re a woman or just because you’re gay.

Now that you know, these diplomats and State Department employees are no longer doing that work.

Lots of people are left without the protection of the United States.

And I think that is that’s really scary.

Maybe I’m idealistic or naive, but I still can’t fathom that, like, this is going to be our new status quo.

Hey.

Hey.

The positions that I was applying for no longer existed or people.

I had one interview where I got to the third round and 30 minutes before the interview, they canceled the interview.

The entire field I was working in is now uprooted, and it’s very confusing how to look for work and the international education.

International development space.

A lot of the jobs that are posted, they don’t actually exist because they were posted before all of this stuff.

So it’s a complete mess.

About a month ago, I started getting really kind of unnerved by the fact that nothing was happening for me.

And I have all these skills.

I speak three languages.

I don’t know, I’ve done a lot.

I’ve traveled a lot.

I’ve built programs from the ground up by myself in very complicated places abroad, and nothing is coming through.

So it’s very frustrating and it’s I don’t know, it felt it was getting kind of depressed about it.

Ah.

Ah.

Ah.

Out.

Margot, leave.

Margot, leave.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Margot leave.

Baca.

Leave.

So, to be honest, this is what a lot of my day looks like.

[wailing] Theatre has always been sort of the second job.

You can hear kind of on the sidelines of the rehearsals.

People are talking about it.

Everybody’s concerned.

But that’s also why we come there.

Because it’s a refuge for us to not think about all of the problems in our lives.

My theatre group is not for profit, and we put in a lot of resources to produce our shows, and then we’re lucky if we get it back.

I’m actually starting a couple of contract based jobs teaching theatre, which is really exciting, but it’s not.

Nothing is full time and it’s all kind of starting from scratch again.

I’m kind of building my own thing from 4 or 5 different opportunities, hopefully.

And he said it’s like an autism thing.

If they’re having like a meltdown or something, if they sit on that and just spin for a while, they calm down.

Like they zone out.

It does something to the way he senses motion and responds to that.

It just makes him chill, I don’t know.

You’re just a freeloader.

You’re not working.

You’re just taking.

People are just kind of waiting.

If anything will change.

We’re not going to, in our lifetime, save the world.

It costs less to be responsible.

Not high pay.

But it is a lot of work.

The money stuff, money money’s imaginary.

Whatever.

It’s so much work and so much good work.

What’s the worst going to happen?

Nobody is in it for the money.

The employment rate by 55%.

It’s really hard to have a conversation.

Lot of truth.

We look at it a little bit differently, I think.

He has a plan.

Could be worse.

It could be worse.

It could be better.

But it is what it is.