Does this unemployment make my butt look bigger?

I've been unemployed for 7 months. 

I knew way beforehand that I was going to be unemployed, so there's no bitterness or resentment to deal with. My factory closed. So I had built up my LinkedIn contacts (and I hate LinkedIn) and left the job with piles of business cards of everyone I had met over 14 years. I started looking for a job a few months before we closed down. But still, no dice. 

I'm not even sure I'm doing unemployment right. I don't get out of bed early and go work out at a gym the way the experts advise you to do. I haven't taken any classes in data analytics or taken up crafting mosaics. I'm depressed. I've been drinking more than normal. I started working on my skin cancer tan.

But what I have done:

• Traveled through the southwest USA!
• Took my dad to have heart surgery out of town
• Seen movies at 1:00 on a weekday afternoon and marveled at how theatres can stay in business with just 3 people in the audience
• Talked to a shaman
• Gone to Portugal!
• Joined a surprisingly worthwhile Unemployed Professionals Group

This stuff, most of it life changing, has broken up the day-in day-out Indeed checking (the first thing I look at when I wake up,) job applications, hopes for interviews, hopes for second interviews, and that's as far as I've gotten. Still haven't achieved the second interview. I think interviews are strange and I think it shows. And don't get me started on job fairs. 

Some days I feel like that's OK. It's OK that I haven't found the job yet. The right one is still out there. The cosmos will make it happen.

Other days, there's a big fat unemployed loser stamp on my butt. I still don't know what I really want to do. How am I ever going to get a job? I should just get a cashier gig at Wegmans. OMG, what if I can't get a grocery store gig? I'm sick of people asking me "Do you have a job YET?" I mean JFC, I'd been working since I was 22, almost 30 years straight -- can a girl take a break?  

At least I stopped taking afternoon naps in front of Ellen. I still go to the grocery store a lot but it's less than during the first couple of months. I still haven't finished my home organization projects that I first tackled in November. I still have tearful meltdowns in front of Salty D. who tells me to get it together, that it'll happen soon, that I'm worthwhile and not a jobless feckless idiot. 

STILL... I'm not an entrepreneur, or consultant-material, or even an enthusiastic volunteer. The volunteer work I've been doing has been very short term, because, you know, that big job could come along at any moment, like a big fat gift falling from the sky. Gotta be ready for it (the director of the local volunteer center disagreed with me.)

I've learned how to just sit still and process my thoughts. At the same time, I'm wary of being too introverted. As that Yes song goes "Don't surround yourself with your self" (I've been listening to the classic rock station a lot lately.)

Today is one of those days where I can't discern if I'm just running in place or if I've actually progressed. Maybe I'm just hangin in there, baby. 

Comments

[Tom Guarriello]

We've managed to make work into a harrowing jumble of fear-driven passivity and identity-centric anxiety over our worth. Most at work wish they weren't; most who aren't wish they were. That's a dead giveaway that something's pretty screwed up in how we've designed work. This sounds stupid, I know, but, go for joy; it's really what makes this all worthwhile. The stuff on your bulleted list sounds like stuff you don't want to lose after you tumble back in to Workworld.

[Blaugra]

Thanks Dr. Tom!