Unemployment: Month Two
I will always associate Michael Jackson dying with getting laid off, because that was the news of the day. Now, two months later, he's been buried. So I guess I should be expecting that One Magic Call today, right?
When you are on unemployment, you are required to contact two employers a week and keep a list -- they can ask for it at any time. I don't keep my list all in one place, because looking at it would be depressing. A job search wears on you, especially since applying for jobs has started to resemble a contentious eBay auction. But the slow, dawning realization that you may have to just chuck all of your education and professional experiences and start over -- well, that's just mortifying. Especially when your resume is four pages long.
Americans are supposed to like to start over. Thing is, I've already started over something like eleven times since I turned 18. I know its appeal. When a friend of mine left to study abroad last fall, I told her she should relish that wonderful between feeling of no longer having a permanent address, of sitting on the train and then the plane knowing that you have left something behind and are entering into a whole different world. But now, my starting over options are more limited. I can't seem to get that between feeling back.
The other thing Americans are supposed to like is working for themselves. I told my mother-in-law this weekend, half-jokingly, that I'm probably never going to find another job and that I was just going to angle for a six-figure book advance. I don't like it, but I may have to try writing for a living. It's what everyone always assumed I was going to do, including me, since I was about 5.
Except ... I don't really want to work for myself. I like going to a job and having coworkers to laugh with and commiserate with. Frankly, I like being told what to do. If that somehow makes me a communist, then I guess call me Olga and hand me a scythe. Oh, I've got the confidence to manage projects all right, but I am not the right person to be running the whole show. Especially not my own show. My God, I can't even manage to get a floor installed!
So ... there's month two. What do I do all day? I read, I write, I read about writing, I contributed a lot of research to the Got City Game project, I think about continuing education, I sit on my front porch and peer at suspicious people. I try and stave off that worried feeling -- that I'm never going to have an income again -- but it sneaks in, usually early in the morning and late at night, when I'm too tired to fend it off. On the plus side, I don't use up a lot of resources! But sometimes, that means I feel like a waste of space.
**update: I've realized, not without amusement, that I've returned to the same dilemma that troubled me when I was working at Shaker, looking for my second job: I could either live someplace I like, or do the kind of work that I'm trained to do and am good at, but probably not both. Boy am I a dummy for not being able to figure out a solution to this one sometime during the last six years.
When you are on unemployment, you are required to contact two employers a week and keep a list -- they can ask for it at any time. I don't keep my list all in one place, because looking at it would be depressing. A job search wears on you, especially since applying for jobs has started to resemble a contentious eBay auction. But the slow, dawning realization that you may have to just chuck all of your education and professional experiences and start over -- well, that's just mortifying. Especially when your resume is four pages long.
Americans are supposed to like to start over. Thing is, I've already started over something like eleven times since I turned 18. I know its appeal. When a friend of mine left to study abroad last fall, I told her she should relish that wonderful between feeling of no longer having a permanent address, of sitting on the train and then the plane knowing that you have left something behind and are entering into a whole different world. But now, my starting over options are more limited. I can't seem to get that between feeling back.
The other thing Americans are supposed to like is working for themselves. I told my mother-in-law this weekend, half-jokingly, that I'm probably never going to find another job and that I was just going to angle for a six-figure book advance. I don't like it, but I may have to try writing for a living. It's what everyone always assumed I was going to do, including me, since I was about 5.
Except ... I don't really want to work for myself. I like going to a job and having coworkers to laugh with and commiserate with. Frankly, I like being told what to do. If that somehow makes me a communist, then I guess call me Olga and hand me a scythe. Oh, I've got the confidence to manage projects all right, but I am not the right person to be running the whole show. Especially not my own show. My God, I can't even manage to get a floor installed!
So ... there's month two. What do I do all day? I read, I write, I read about writing, I contributed a lot of research to the Got City Game project, I think about continuing education, I sit on my front porch and peer at suspicious people. I try and stave off that worried feeling -- that I'm never going to have an income again -- but it sneaks in, usually early in the morning and late at night, when I'm too tired to fend it off. On the plus side, I don't use up a lot of resources! But sometimes, that means I feel like a waste of space.
**update: I've realized, not without amusement, that I've returned to the same dilemma that troubled me when I was working at Shaker, looking for my second job: I could either live someplace I like, or do the kind of work that I'm trained to do and am good at, but probably not both. Boy am I a dummy for not being able to figure out a solution to this one sometime during the last six years.
posted by Christine Borne at 7:42 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home