It's hard work being unemployed

Until I got laid off 3 weeks ago, I never realized how much work it is to be unemployed. I worked at USA Today for almost 17 years. So it’s safe to say that I am a little rusty when it comes to applying for jobs. Did I say a little? What I really meant to say is that I am “junk-heap-Ford-Pinto” kind of rusty. The “find an old Ajax can behind your garage” kind of rusty. The “make-jokes-about-two-really-old-brands-that-only-people-alive-in-the-1970s-will-understand” kind of rusty. The first few weeks of being unemployed after 17 years at the same company is a weird roller coaster of emotions. It’s sorta like the seven stages of grief, because you weep and get angry and pump your fist at the sky and shout, in your best Nancy Kerrigan, “WHY ME?” Except during all of this you’re expected to dig deep into your soul, pull out every ounce of positivity and confidence, and write the World’s! Best! Resume! Ever! And in my case, after all these years, I just can’t remember everything I’ve accomplished. I probably should have taken better notes along the way (Dear Diary, Today I saved the company a bajillion dollars!), but who has time for that? Regardless, at this very low point of your life, you have to pull yourself up by your slippers (because who has bootstraps anymore, much less who is wearing them during a pandemic?) and be the epitome of confidence and poise. At least, that’s how the stages started for me. Stage 1: OK, No Problem, I’ve Got This These are the first words I mutter to myself when I hang up from the conference call with my now-former boss and the woman from HR. They’re the last words I say to my spouse and kids after I break the news. And it’s what I repeat in my head every time I log into Linkedin, Indeed, Simply Hired, Monster and CareerBuilder. I say “no problem” so much that I start to wonder if Netflix is showing the movie “Cool Runnings.” To my dismay, it’s not. Stage 2: Holy Crap, I Have So Many Bills That I Forgot About While I'm scanning for movies on Netflix (I don’t have anything else to do, after all), something hits me like an anvil in a Wile E. Coyote cartoon. “Holy crap, I pay 10 bucks a month for this!” Then I check my bank account and see all the deductions from Apple, Amazon Music, Kindle, Sirius XM, Hulu, and all those other little subscriptions that I pay for automatically through PayPal or ACH. Suddenly, all those careless whispers of “Eh, it’s only $5.99 a month!” come back to haunt me like a 1980s pop ballad. Ignorance is kind, indeed. Stage 3: I Will Be the Awesomest Unemployed Person You Ever Met! Lucky for me, I learn you can cancel your subscriptions but keep watching until the month is up. (Small victories!) Over on Amazon Prime, I watch “Fun with Dick & Jane” and see Jim Carrey slowly losing his mind after he loses his job. Like his character, for the first week I plunked myself down at my computer each morning, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. First, I had to update my resume, which is not even remotely as easy as it sounds, because it hadn’t been updated in 17 years. The design and content reeked of the stench of 2003. There were no Google search words. No fancy 2020 team-building jargon. (But there was a watermark on the fancy paper. I'm just sayin'.) After 4 days of updating and wondering how I ever even got my last job with that smelly old resume, I turned my attention to Linkedin. That took another three days. At the end of the first week, I was exhausted. And I hadn’t even applied to any jobs yet. Stage 4: I’m Starting To Think I Don’t Actually Got This. When I did start hitting “apply,” I was confidently punching the button. “It’s the perfect job! Of course they’ll call me.” A week goes by. And another. There are practically cobwebs on my iPhone. Questions flood my brain as doubt creeps in. What am I doing wrong? Is my resume awful? Is anyone even receiving these applications? How much of it is me, and how much of it is the pandemic? How long will my money last? Did anyone ever actually figure out where in the world Carmen Sandiego was? More importantly, can I stream that show on Hulu before my subscription expires? Stage 5: Denial is a River in Egypt My first nibble arrives at the end of Week 3! But the salary is, as Flo-Rida says, “low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low.” I rationalize this and wonder how much money I really need to survive. Surely I don’t need as much as before. Surely I can find a side gig. Surely I can make it work. Well, no, I probably can’t, and stop calling me Shirley. So that’s where I leave you. What’s next for Week 4, you ask? Well, I’ll give you a hint: It’s the 3 words that strike fear into every GenXer’s soul. If you guessed “Solid Gold dancers,” you’re wrong. (And probably day drunk.) If you said “creating this website,” ding ding ding ding ding! But don’t worry, I’ve totally got this.