Lament of the Unemployed

For me, it's coming. I feel it looming, sitting on my shoulder like I'm a pirate with an incontinent parrot, the incontinent parrot being my anxiety. This week and into the next, I'm visiting the town that will soon be my new home, hoping to in fact find a new home. What moving means for me, is that I'll soon be jobless. Which sucks. If you've been unemployed recently, it's more stressful than being employed, and more than that, more stressful than having a job as an air traffic controller or a porn actor with a case of premature ejaculation.

Oh, duh, I just have to flip the switch! Source

When I'm sans-job, I treat looking for a job as my job. I spend 8 hours a day applying for jobs and performing job-procurement related activities. Which equals to 8 hours of rejection per day. This is not psychologically conducive to happiness.


Job searching is like what I imagine it was like for Steve Buscemi trying to get a date before he was famous. The whole process makes you feel like you're shopping for jeans in places that only have fluorescent lights after two weeks of shame-binging on cheesecake. 


Job searching is about as emotionally satisfying as being Donald Trump's hair-artist or being the person who has to lacquer Steven Tyler's face to make him look human. But it is still strangely more satisfying that what it must be like to be a meter maid (I refuse to call those scumbags "parking enforcement officers"). So after weeks (days) of self-flagellation, I vacillate between whether it's better to get a rejection letter or hear nothing at all. Is it better to end a flirtation with a flat out rejection or just not hear anything at all? 

Awwww man, if Spider-Man is homeless, what chance do I have? Source

Even interviews are demeaning because, as the jobless, you're mentally begging for approval. In the rare instances an interview is offered, there's so much groveling in abject desperation that I forget to ask my fantasy questions that are incredibly important to employment harmony:

• On a scale of 1-10, 1 being occasional mood swings and 10 being a narcissistic sociopath, how batsh** crazy are you. Follow up, how dogfart nuts are my potential coworkers? Would you characterize them as petty and back-biting, or generally mellow except Jan in Accounting who's super anal and passive aggressive?
• I fear getting another job where the bosses take everything to be life and death (mellow out, you're not performing open-heart surgery on a toddler), do you, as a manager, have real life perspective?
• As part of my salary negotiation, I will agree to come in and work on two holidays in exchange for one afternoon, with no consequences or ramifications, I get to tell anyone in the office to go f*** his/herself. Your move. 
• Do you install electric shock collars on people that activate when they start to talk about their commute?
• Who in the office has an odor problem and will I be forced to have contact with this person on a regular basis? 

So, I'm about to set sail on a rudderless ship that doesn't have a sail. If anyone would like to hire a good worker who is crazy talented and has nearly no ambition (meaning I'll stay there as long as it's comfortable), I'm yours for cheap.