Life Unemployed

Over the previous seven months I enjoyed the freedom and crushing depression of unemployment. For any of you out there considering trying it for yourself, I would advise waiting until someone (namely your current employer) makes that decision for you. Regardless of your means to end up in a position of joblessness, there are a few things to consider in order to be mentally prepared for your new found free-time.

With your 24/7 "Me Time" you will experience so much unbridled futzing-around you literally won't know what to do with yourself.

Take up skateboarding?

Learn an instrument?

Go all Kobiashi on the snacks in your house?

After just a few weeks devoid of responsibility, you will find yourself creating a daily schedule of your favorite time wasters.

(10am) Be awoken by the alarm. Ready to greet the day you slide over and gently hit the snooze button. "In five minutes I'll be able to spring out of bed"

(10:35am) After hitting the snooze button several more times you find the alarm clock to be of no use to you anymore. Your plans to make the most of the day now take a back seat to "get the most out of your most recent dream"

(12:30pm) Free from the clutches of the chirping clock beside your bed you rise like a freshly bitten zombie.

(12:45pm) Without the constraints of "when" and "what" can be considered breakfast, you fulfill all your dreams on one plate. Leftover Chinese and an ice cream sandwich? Sounds delightful!

(2:10pm) Daytime television never looked so good. You welcome your new friends Paul Williams and Phyllis Newman, and the other Young and Restless people like yourself. You attentively try your best to figure out who's sleeping with whom, and just exactly which one is the "evil" twin.

(3:40pm) After alphabetizing your DVD collection yields bland results you then attempt to sort them chronologically according to when you first heard about them.

(4:20pm) You do nothing at all.

(4:45pm) You finally muster up the strength to check for mail. You are not expecting anything, but the act of doing something you don't entirely want to gives you the feeling of accomplishment.

(5:25pm) Although you technically didn't have lunch it's time to find some dinner. You are tempted to try a new restaurant in the neighborhood so that perhaps you can suggest it to your working friends later on.

(5:30pm) You go to the tried and true restaurant of choice and order everything you've ever liked from there, because you're gonna need breakfast for the rest of the week.

(6:14pm) With your employed friends getting out of work you phone them up to see what they're doing/brag about your day. When they are too tired from work to hang out you brag some more and hang up.

(8:40pm) With the prime-time television starting you revel in the fact that "finally there's something good on TV" when you realize that it's repeats of things you've seen already, you continue watching.

(10:02pm) As you pass your old bedtime you become revitalized with the fact that you do not need to get up early the next day. With a ten-gallon-stride you march over to your computer to see what's new with the internet that you haven't seen before.

(3:45am) With tired eyes and a possible scarring for life you leave your computer. Your head brimming with wiki-facts you shuffle over to bed. You don't need to shower since you didn't really exert yourself today and whatever condition your mouth is in can stay that way until the morning, because seriously, it's too late to brush now.

Then you sleep. More soundly than you have slept in a long while. Maybe it's because there's no fear of the alarm which you already broke, maybe it's from sleep deprivation, but you will know it's because you are the ruler of your time.

(NOTE: All of the above activities are interchangeable with watching porn and playing video games)