On Unemployment

It is my last day of unemployment. Tomorrow and henceforth, a person of some supervisory capacity will expect things of me. He/She will expect me to be punctual and efficient, and probably contented by the mediocre compensation which he/she has offered me in order to render services that will make him/her exponentially richer, by virtue of enlisting my womanpower, and my cheery disposition to boot. I will continue to collect some small fraction of unemployment through the vehicle of the Massachusetts Department of Unemployment. This payment will draw from the wealthy banks of my former employer, in light of my former employer's decision to send me packing, just minutes after my former employer escorted my former bossman out with his trenchcoat and gym bag and no goodbye.

Fortunately for me, my life is not so terribly existential as I sometimes illustrate it.

Rather, for the last month, I have been slovenly, leisurely, and sometimes totally frivolous with money that I did not have. I posed as a Lady who Lunched. I made good on some care packages to friends and mothers. I spent long leisurely hours at the gym. I flossed, sometimes twice in one day. I kept a checklist and sometimes, kapoot with it all, I was going to watch the Food Network by candlelight for several hours.

A forced sabbatical is much different than one that is chosen, one that is planned. So I have tried to make the most of mine. I was often beleagured by shady job prospectors and the general sense that there was no one on earth whose very life would assuredly be improved by my efforts to get up in the morning.

But that is also the problem of unemployment. One develops a certain ego about her time, her purpose. Which is why I am so glad to be returning to a dayjob once more. I am not sure that I can spend another day with myself.