Moose in the Kitchen

I’ve been unemployed many times throughout my life – sometimes by choice, sometimes by accident, sometimes by deep governmental conspiracy aimed at the diminutive yet raucous aliens perched atop my head. At any rate, I have a fair amount of experience in this arena and I think I’m finally getting good at it. A lot more people are dealing with this recently, so I thought I’d actually talk about it. IMAGINE THAT. Talking about my personal experience on a blog about my personal experience! (Sometimes I avoid the looming and real, because the imaginary and concocted is so much more fun.) But this is real, and it’s real for a lot of people. So here are my thoughts. If you’re in this situation, I hope they help or entertain. Or at least do no harm. I can be quite Hippocratic when the whim strikes.

First off: I’d like to adjust the vocabulary. We are not unemployed. We are very employed. Employed by life, if you will. Yes, we may be a little more strapped for cash, or possibly racing down the street flapping our arms and shrieking about refrigerator boxes and their decided lack of amenities, but I think it’s good to separate the two. Divide the admitted need for money from what you do all day.

If you find yourself abruptly without the job you enjoyed (or didn’t, more on that later), it’s good to give yourself a few days to do whatever you need to do. Vent, read fiction printed on cheap paper, pull out small tufts of hair, bake carrot zucchini muffins – whatever it takes to process the shock. But after a day or two or four, it’s important (so important!) (and I’m not being condescending, I’m actually speaking to my 21-year-old self) (does anyone know how to send an email to 1999?) to pick yourself off the couch and start doing whatever will comprise the next phase of your life.

But before we do that, we talk about feelings: OH, THE FEELINGS. Unless you’re a titanium-plated robot, you’re going to be feeling something and a lot of that something will probably be negative. I went through a three-week cycle this time around that involved lots of phone calls to my poor, sainted mother, and any number of aggravating emails to my friends wherein I USED LOTS OF CAPS TO ADEQUATELY CONVEY MY EMOTIONS. Then I stopped, because the last thing you want to do at a time like this is alienate your friends. Especially if they’re the type of friends who will invite you over for dinner and feed you chicken and that’s awesome because you stopped buying chicken as meat is more expensive and unemployment – sorry, BEING EMPLOYED BY LIFE – has turned you into a de facto vegetarian. Yum, spinach!

Social enculturation: is a bitch. No two ways about it. Because no matter how confident and kickass you are, there will be a point – whether it lasts a week, a year, or 37 seconds – where you wonder if you’re a failure. Or if you did something to deserve this. Because having a job is equal to success and being a productive member of society. Blah blah blah, etc. You know how it feels and you know it sucks. But I’m slowly coming around to the thought that slaving away in CubeVille doing something that doesn’t appeal to me or isn’t best contributing my skill and talent to the world may actually be worse than being a little unstable in the income department while doing what I do best. It took me a long time to get here, and it still disappears the second I think about December’s rent. (Incidentally, I’ve taken to avoiding my landlady because I’m pretty sure she’s noticed I’m around a hell of a lot more and might be wondering what’s up with that.) (Hi, landlady! Nice to see you at 3:30 on a Wednesday afternoon, but must dash! Very busy!) But I think it’s really really essential to separate Need For Money from Self Worth and What You Do With Yourself All Day.

Bring us to that vaunted next phase: Now is an amazing time to think about change. Really THINK about what it is that thrills you to your toes. Don’t worry if the possibilities of it paying your rent are so slim Heidi Montag is taking it out for a club soda and asking for diet tips. That doesn’t matter right now. Right now you want to get yourself so excited about something that you feel like you could have a conversation with Oprah and wow her sensible support hose right off. Because figuring out if you’re on the right track will do one of several awesome things. It might actually become your next plan of rent-paying attack, it might keep you motivated and excited as you hunt for a job, it might catapult you to a mythical land full of prancing unicorns and pool boys named Paco. I don’t know, I just think having something that motivates and drives you is essential. Always, but especially at a time when you don’t have a set schedule pushing you forward. And when it’s entirely conceivable to find yourself on the carpet with a bowl of rocky road and soap operas at 2 p.m. JUST SAYING.

I’m using the time I have now to put a bunch of projects in motion – things I’ve wanted to do for years but just never got around to. I’ve found myself at my desk clattering away on my keyboard only to look up and wonder why my back hurts and where the daylight went. And I love it. Because I’m doing things I love. After spending so much time in CubeVille gauging the precise motion of the clock, it’s entirely refreshing to consistently lose myself in work. (Whether that work is paying my way or not.) (Cough.) Whatever happens, this time is not wasted. These projects are getting over the first hurdle and they’ll stay in motion, whatever time I have to devote to them later. That feels incredibly powerful, which is WHAT YOU WANT HERE IN “I DON’T HAVE AN OFFICIAL JOB WHAT OF IT?” LAND, TRUST ME.

To that pesky bill-paying thing: Fuck if I know. I’m trying not to fall into the first horrifically dreary money making opportunity that comes my way, because that’s how I’ve spent a lot of time stuck. (Even those horrifically dreary things are mostly absent in this climate.) I’m just trying to keep busy and do what I love and NOT PANIC. CEASE THY PANIC. REMEMBER THE FRONTISPIECE TO HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE. That said, I have lots of little things going and will hopefully cobble together a living by the time I really need it. Sometimes I feel way too naively zen as I do this. But that’s when I start getting scared again. Trust me, I get nothing done when I’m scared. So naive or otherwise, thinking in a way that makes me feel good rather than bad is absolutely the way to go. But yeah, it’s all a little iffy at this point in time. Chime in if you have this money thing sorted and how.

Details, like food (you know the subject’s important when food drops to the bottom of the list): When your cash flow suddenly drops, you start thinking far more carefully about your luxuries. I personally am happy to eat Trader Joe’s cheddar instead of Cowgirl Creamery, but you’ll wrest my pricey Blue Bottle coffee from my chilled, taxidermied fingers. In my 20s, I would have immediately cut everything because DOOM DESPAIR AND WOE FOR I HAVE NO STEADY PAYCHECK. But I’m too old for that shit. (As a caveat, I assume this works differently if you have a family to support. There’s just me and so I can cheerfully acknowledge that my decision to keep the fancy coffee affects no one but myself. If a small tyke with a growling tummy was staring at me with quivering lower lip, a la Oliver Twist, I’d hurl that coffee out a window so fast the coffee beans would actually travel back in time.) (This caveat goes for the entire post, I think, because obviously you might need to look at things differently if you have a family to support.) (But maybe not! I don’t know because I don’t have one!) Being single is handy here, because I can easily eat on $20-30 a week at Trader Joe’s. If you’re unemployed and have access to Trader Joe’s, GO THERE. GO NOW. THANK ME LATER.

Conclusions, profound or otherwise: Don’t say you’re unemployed. Say you’re freelance. That’s what I do. You can do ANYTHING freelance. You can be a freelance banana peel sculptor if you want. Then do something that really floats your proverbial boat. When I’m motivated by doing something I really love – and detaching it from the money question – I feel AWESOME. Like I could karate kick Jackie Chan and, after he peeled his spinal chord from the asphalt, he’d bow with suitable reverence and offer to take me out for a cheeseburger. It all smacks of Do What You Love and The Money Will Follow, and I’ve felt cynical about that for years. Possibly decades. But maybe it’s not about the outcome, it’s about how you feel while you’re heading toward it.

Take whatever your situation is and turn it inside out and maybe knit it a fresh collar or give it a hasty bleach until you feel better about it. Feeling good is the only way anything good will happen.

Stepping off ye olde soapbox because ye gods this has gotten long: I could write a 300-page thesis on this topic – and people have. But one must cease a blog post eventually. I may speak more to this later, but in the meantime: if you’re unemployed now or have been in the past and have something to say or to add or to argue, please do. The comments are your oyster.