The Mindbend of Unemployment

I haven't been unemployed in over 15 years. In college, I worked two jobs in addition to being a full-time student almost from the get-go. Then in grad school, where I was paid to be a student, I usually also had one or two jobs on the side. After that, having just one job seemed like a real vacation, though I soon found myself working as Mike's assistant in the evenings while he wrote his dissertation, and of course planning a wedding can be a job too. So now finding myself unemployed seems to be playing tricks on me.

I always idealized this life as a time to catch up on all those pursuits I could never fully indulge, silk painting, photography, riding, books. I felt that if there was anything I ought to do for my health, it was to downshift and move more slowly. It all looked great on paper. In practice, though, I find myself feeling somewhat less than my worth. Now that Mike is a gainfully employed academic, I am becoming mindlessly panicked about finding a job. The hobbies, it's now clear, were fun because they were the sidestream of a mainstream life. Going down the sidestream fulltime reveals itself to be somewhat rocky, lacking the flow I thought I might find.

My feckless ex, in the first year of our conjugal life, was laid off for a few months as a computer programmer during one of those silicon valley downturns. He had thought he would finally learn to cook, and manage the household aspects while I worked 3rd shift and finished college. In no time he was living in sweats in untold squalor while he sank into a shapeless depression. Well, that wasn't going to be me, and instead I am fighting to keep myself from sliding. My dayrunner is fuller day by day, and I perform more diverse physical and mental tasks than I did as an employee, but I lack the daily thread of a long-term task, the structure of schedule and chain of command. My father's voice looms about how I am wasting that great hard-earned education. But the truth is, I haven't really had to find a job in a long time, and uprooted from my former network, estalishing myself takes caution and deliberation. Unemployment, as it turns out, takes work and a little courage. I can certainly see, though, how the chronically unemployed spiral into depression.

Imagine poor Penelope waiting for Ulysses and undoing her weaving every night.