Being Unemployed

Being unemployed is just like being on vacation. It's so delightful, I think, "Why can't I always live like this?" There was a time in the late nineties early aughts when I was unemployed and it was one of the best times of my life.

After the first initial shock and anxiety (of being laid off), I eased into it and enjoyed the hell out of it. Got up late, took naps, and did whatever I wanted as long as it didn't cost more than five dollars. I've been fired/laid off twice: The first time was 1998 and I had to go downtown with all my paperwork and stand in line and watch a video. The second time, I only had to phone them, give my social security number and they had all my tax returns on the computer. They knew everything about me and all my employment history. It rocked. Then, I just got checks in the mail.

I'm a relatively frugal person and my rent was only $425 a month for a room on the Lower East Side (dear reader: there are tears streaming down my cheeks as I write this). I milked this lifestyle for a long time. If you can live on hotdogs and read library books, you might want to look into unemployment.

I'm now "between jobs" as I just quit my job on Friday and am going to rely on savings until I feel like getting around to putting a few resumes out there. I'm thirty something and I still don't know what I want to do with my life, but I'm pretty flexible and happy doing a lot of things.

I'm not particularly anal retentive when it comes to work. The things I require from a job: healthy paycheck, responsibility, no yelling or high drama, 9-5 hours fixed. I can't deal with a job where I gotta pull all nighters and luckily I've never had to do that: ever. To all those in publishing, this can be done. I worked for a trade publication where we were in charge of five publications and the LATEST I ever stayed was 5:30 once because I was waiting for a fax approval.

These past couple days it's seemed like an eternal weekend. My alarm still goes off, but I let those NPR assholes talk and talk away and they don't wake me up. I stay up later playing video games. It doesn't matter if I have caffeine in the afternoon because it doesn't matter how I sleep. I can go on field trips and go shopping where the crowds are relatively nonexistant.

Now, I have to take a shower and get dressed. I'm walking to downtown San Francisco where my father will buy me a steak lunch at his favorite businessman's bistro. TOUGH LIFE HUH?!!! I'm a regular Paris Hilton.