lipby (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} lipbylipby) wrote,@ 2009-06-28 18:48:00 |
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Unemployed, finally
On my last day of work at my famously dreadful job, I looked to the right sidebar of my Facebook page to see this advert:
This image was a reminder that, in my bounding joy at ridding myself of this job, I had forgotten to stop by a park bench on my way home and hang my head in despair.
There are certain conventions regarding finding yourself without work-- typically you're expected to wallow in self-doubt (and Häagen-Dazs) for a week or two before taking halting steps towards recovery-- that I am violating. While millions join the ranks of the unemployed with a pit of anxiety and fear in their bellies, I simply feel renewed. The restorative spiritual effects of unemployment benefits is a little mentioned benefit of our current pseudo-Stalinist socialist welfare state. It may be perverse, but the very thing that is decimating the nation as a whole is lifting my spirits and given me a renewed sense of opportunity and optimism. It's like I'm tap dancing my way to the soup kitchen-- though, thanks to communists like LBJ and FDR, the soup kitchen has been replaced by a gigantic gold-plated replica of the government's teat. My compliments to their Marxist overlords in Moscow.
My actual last day, which I had prepared for by entering into a state of utter detachment, was actually much less fake than I expected. People come and go at a place like that, and I have seen enough of it to know that the convulsions of sadness that most departing employees expect never materialize. As world-changing and epic as my last day felt to me, it was, for everyone else, just the last day of another workweek they're trying to get through. Unless you're JFK, the hole of your absence tends to fill up amazingly quickly. (I may, however, begin making bomb threats simply to keep my name in the public eye over there.)
With that being said, I was well enough pleased that my parting warranted two cakes and a plate of Primos' hoagies and a spectrum of goodbyes ranging from the touching to the why-are-we-even-fucking-bothering-with-t
So I found myself facing the prospect of, for a few months at least, channeling my energies in the direction that suits me, rather than in the direction that some loose assemblage of assholes, crackheads, and prima donnas determine. (Have I mentioned that the letters of the organization I worked for, PDDC, stand for Pricks, Dicks, Douchebags, and Cunts?)
How many similar opportunities like this have I had in my life, squandering entire summers in high school watching reruns at 2:00am and stealing my Dad's girlie magazines? No experience is completely bad if it reminds you that if your time is valuable.
If two weeks from now I am spending all of my time looking a tattered copies of Penthouse and watching old episodes of Get Smart, then the misery of the past three years has been for naught.
And in that cause, there's only one solution for my weakness: Find an ever worse job.
On my last day of work at my famously dreadful job, I looked to the right sidebar of my Facebook page to see this advert:
This image was a reminder that, in my bounding joy at ridding myself of this job, I had forgotten to stop by a park bench on my way home and hang my head in despair.
There are certain conventions regarding finding yourself without work-- typically you're expected to wallow in self-doubt (and Häagen-Dazs) for a week or two before taking halting steps towards recovery-- that I am violating. While millions join the ranks of the unemployed with a pit of anxiety and fear in their bellies, I simply feel renewed. The restorative spiritual effects of unemployment benefits is a little mentioned benefit of our current pseudo-Stalinist socialist welfare state. It may be perverse, but the very thing that is decimating the nation as a whole is lifting my spirits and given me a renewed sense of opportunity and optimism. It's like I'm tap dancing my way to the soup kitchen-- though, thanks to communists like LBJ and FDR, the soup kitchen has been replaced by a gigantic gold-plated replica of the government's teat. My compliments to their Marxist overlords in Moscow.
My actual last day, which I had prepared for by entering into a state of utter detachment, was actually much less fake than I expected. People come and go at a place like that, and I have seen enough of it to know that the convulsions of sadness that most departing employees expect never materialize. As world-changing and epic as my last day felt to me, it was, for everyone else, just the last day of another workweek they're trying to get through. Unless you're JFK, the hole of your absence tends to fill up amazingly quickly. (I may, however, begin making bomb threats simply to keep my name in the public eye over there.)
With that being said, I was well enough pleased that my parting warranted two cakes and a plate of Primos' hoagies and a spectrum of goodbyes ranging from the touching to the why-are-we-even-fucking-bothering-with-t
So I found myself facing the prospect of, for a few months at least, channeling my energies in the direction that suits me, rather than in the direction that some loose assemblage of assholes, crackheads, and prima donnas determine. (Have I mentioned that the letters of the organization I worked for, PDDC, stand for Pricks, Dicks, Douchebags, and Cunts?)
How many similar opportunities like this have I had in my life, squandering entire summers in high school watching reruns at 2:00am and stealing my Dad's girlie magazines? No experience is completely bad if it reminds you that if your time is valuable.
If two weeks from now I am spending all of my time looking a tattered copies of Penthouse and watching old episodes of Get Smart, then the misery of the past three years has been for naught.
And in that cause, there's only one solution for my weakness: Find an ever worse job.
