Perks

Un(der)employment is not for the feint of heart. You have to remind yourself constantly to maintain your focus, stay objective, and be as positive as the situation warrants. But in the face of all the negativity there are some often overlooked perks.

You can nap whenever and where ever you want to. I know I do. Face down on the couch? You betcha. In my office chair? How uncomfortable, but doable. Clearly my bed is always available. So napping will always be at the top of my list.

You can eat whatever you want at any time you remember you're suppose to eat. The only people who eat three meals a day are the ones who have schedules to keep. Gone are the days of any regular eating habits. Spent all morning in a good wallow? Sounds like you should eat only dinner because, too late, its nine at night somehow. And also, dinner is pretzels. Eat oatmeal, five times, in one day. Bowl of ice cream at two in the afternoon. A bottle of red wine over the course of a day. Your options are endless and no one can judge you. Because everyone else is at work.

Bathing is a thing you should do only if there's someone to impress. I'm cutting back on my laundry by just a ton and saving on soap. Also, the guy down at the Walgreen's does not care what funk I'm bringing into the store with me at five minutes till close. He just wants to sell me more sour gummy worms (which are for dinner, as noted above).

You can watch anything you want on tv/youtube/Netflix/Hulu. I have seen every episode of Say Yes to the Dress which is available on Netflix. I'm not entirely sure yet if this is a perk, but I have done it.

You can pretend to shop online. This is such a fun game, I can't even tell you how often I do it. After sending out your mandatory two applications a day, reward yourself by going on to some ridiculous website. I particularly love faux vintage clothing retailers where the starting price of a tshirt is about $30. Fill an entire shopping cart with things you would like to own, then frantically click out of the website. Repeat with accessories and shoes as you like.

You can start a blog. Jury's still out on how well that's going.

You can play video games. All the video games. There are so many of them! Once you do the things you know you have to (apply to jobs, brush your teeth, apply to jobs, something else I forget) its like you've got an entire other 12 hours to fill of your day, because obviously regular sleeping is optional now with all these naps you can take. Personally I've been engaged in replaying all of Lego Harry Potter and getting 100% completion which would be shockingly time consuming if I had other concerns in my life.

You can internet. Perhaps the previous remark on watching tv and whatnot falls under this category, but I feel like interneting is a whole other experience. For example: I was on buzzfeed for four hours today. Then I went on foodgawker for an additional two. There is no end to the riches of interneting.

Un(der)employment sucks. Its emotionally draining and feels like a full time job all on its own, constantly tweaking my resume and writing dozens of cover letters. But I'm coming around to embracing that I also have to take some time to wallow. Otherwise, I will burn myself out on the emotional highs and lows of the situation.

Susie Homemaker

I like to consider myself an active member of Generation Y, in that I currently work about an average of ten hours a week and am coming up on the realization that I will probably have to file for unemployment if I can't find a job in another month.

I had the great fortune to be laid off from not one, but two! jobs in January. It has left something of a dent in my psyche and an even greater impression on my wallet. These are not new concepts. On the whole people that fall within Generation Fail are underemployed to unemployed. You work crap jobs you know you're overqualified for and you smile and bow and scrape to hold on to those. Its a symptom of the condition the Baby Boomers have left us in. I make no apologies for blaming them for our current economic tail spin. They over stretched themselves and now they can't afford to retire so there is no longer a graying of the profession to look forward to.

I made the double good choice of setting my heart toward nonprofit work. Because money train baby, money train. I want to be making barely minimum wage for the rest of my life, because it lines my heart with righteousness or something.

Seeing as I have just a shit ton of time on my hands these days I have to find things to do, other than make money. Most of this downtime is spent applying to jobs in the hopes that, yes, soon I will have that as an option. But otherwise, I would say my time is spent in a combination of wallowing, watching strange reality programming on netflix, playing video games, and occasionally pretending I am Betty Crocker.

This latter option was a strong part of today's accomplishments. I got to use the crock-pot my parents bought me for Christmas, for the first time. A hallmark in any young woman from the 1960's book. And I made so many, many cupcakes. I'm fortunate in that I have people I can foist my efforts on to. Roommates and my gentleman caller, primarily. Otherwise, who the hell needs 24 cupcakes on Wednesday?

This is an experiment

I'm awful at being consistent. Everything for me is a series of time trials. I enjoy and revel in my ability to complete a task for as long as anyone is watching me actively do it. So starting a blog feels like one of those things I'm going to forget about.

I have all these incredibly vivid memories from my childhood of receiving tons of journals from my aunts and uncles as that last ditch effort to buy me SOMETHING as a gift, usually with the tacked on comment of, "You've always liked to write!" A genuine attempt at connection, while dismissing the fact that I probably just wanted a doll. I fucking loved dolls. But I would always get it into my head that here, this is your journal, your little diary, and you are going to write in it all the time and it is going to be just...groundbreaking. I found many of these half formed time capsules during the process of moving out my parent's house a year ago. The ones from the late nineties are filled with the kind of gravity only children can possibly have while writing in a diary. "Today Tabitha was so mean to me in math. We wore the same shirt. Everyone laughed."

I was a dismal 4th grader. And my handwriting hasn't improved AT ALL. (Samples to follow)

The ones from high school read like an episode of something that would be featured on the CW. All frenetic emotion. I was human Id, in the way that everyone who was ever a teenage always is. Everything was tragic, everything was wonderful, and no one was ever going to know what it felt like to be me. Except for Sylvia Plath, possibly. What I'm trying to say is, I was hilarious.

The one tie that binds these strata of my youth is the fact that every single one begins the same way. I felt it incredibly necessary to speak to each of these journals, as though sitting down with Barbara Walters, for the story of my life. "Dear Diary, I know we've just met, but I feel you should know who I am before we begin." ACTUAL QUOTE. I would then labor over every pertinent detail of my life to that point, a sort of "Previously on Lost..." jump cut into my first entry. How could I possibly tell you what happened today! You have no context! Silly, diary! I was a strange kid.

I have to resist that urge so very hard right now, to not give some sweeping introduction to my life. Because somehow I've trained my brain to assume that's what diaries/journals/blogs/bathroom stalls are for. But where's the mystery in that? I'm going to just assume this blog is not unlike evenings in my house when friends are over. I'm going to think of a story and share it. With context, without, and usually nonlinear.

Also, thank God this is the only time I have to write a first post, because it is super awkward.