The main problem with "funemployment" is staring into the existential void every day, that bottomless abyss where my job used to be. I’ve mostly bought into our cultural programming that says one’s job is the primary source of one’s self-worth. Therefore, each jobless day becomes a quest to justify my existence for another 24 hours.
The first time I tried to escape CorpWorld, in 2008, I thought I could write my way out, so I worked (hard) on my writing almost every day. But I failed in that endeavor. Of course, I wrote a sketch comedy revue for the Fringe Festival, so the odds of hitting the big time were minuscule to begin with.
I’m still writing, but I’ve been starting my daily session a few hours later in the afternoon this time around, and it’s a much harder slog than it used to be. Although I’m trying to write essays now, which are a lot harder for me than sketches. So maybe I should cut myself some slack.
At some point between then and now, I lost faith that my artistic genius would save me from the fate that befalls most people, namely, having to work boring, everyday, run-of-the-mill jobs. That precipitated a crisis, because I could no longer discount the present.
I could no longer convince myself that the shittiness of today would be redeemed by a glorious tomorrow in which I had my dream job, acting as a vessel of the Universal Soul, delivering The Eternal Truth to the world by way of comedy sketches, sitcoms and/or films. I had to find work in the meantime that actually provided meaning (and money).
This revelation was facilitated by the tightening job market, which refused to provide me with the kind of easy data-entry gigs I found in the 2000’s. The new meaningless corporate jobs were taking up more and more of my brain and, more important, my emotional bandwidth. I couldn’t just plug into music or podcasts and space out all day. I actually had to give kind of a fuck, and that wasn’t what I was looking for in a 9-to-5.
At the same time, I had moved in with my parents, which, ironically, gave me less license to be immature. Somehow, lazing around all day watching TV seemed even more wasteful, lazy and juvenile with my parents around.
It became more difficult to justify these “quirks” as the typical growing pains of an artist when my artistic career was virtually nonexistent. My immaturity was also losing a lot of its sheen. Artists have to remain childlike in order to be creative, staying open to the wonder and absurdities of life. But, by this point, I had become more childish than childlike.
I doubt my immaturity was the reason my friends drifted away. (I tended to be my least immature around them.) But I had to accept that, if I wanted things to improve, I would have to grow up. I couldn’t just hide behind my artistic-ness or the tragedy of my friends’ abandonment anymore.
I’d always thought of myself as a Good Person, but I began to realize that I hadn’t done much lately to justify that belief. So I started behaving better and stopped calculating actions just to benefit me. I realized a Good Person wouldn’t only be friendly with people he thought could provide something for him. A Good Person would be friendly with everyone. I didn’t realize how much of my old Good Person had been lost in adolescence. (I also may be idealizing my boyhood self just a bit.)
Instead of blaming my parents for my adolescence and my current predicament (which seem inextricably linked), I became grateful for their support. Instead of harping on the shittiness of my various jobs, I appreciated the benefits, such as exercise, human contact, sense of purpose or cool co-workers, depending on what each job offered.
Because of that gratitude, I can feel a really amazing joy now in being an uncle and sharing that experience with my family, the people who continue to stand by me even though I’ve often been a pretty big asshole to them. And that’s something no amount of money or professional success can provide.
Saturday, September 23, 2017
Monday, September 11, 2017
After the Flood
By any conventional measure, I’m a huge loser. I’m 39 and have been living with my parents for almost 8 years. I haven’t gotten laid in 7 years (although, frankly, I’m impressed that I managed to get laid at all after moving back home). In that time, I’ve had 2 or 3 dates. I’m a clerical worker with a degree in English. I have one friend, that is, one person I could make plans with IRL ("in real life" for all you olds).
But even now that I’m back in the ranks of the unemployed, I don’t feel ashamed like I used to. It helps that I was let go from this job instead of quitting. Also, I realized that I shouldn’t be shamed by the conventions of our society, because it’s a really messed-up society. But the real reason I’m not ashamed anymore is because I finally feel like an adult and a Good Person again.
Back in late October of 2009, when I moved in with my parents, I was in a tight spot. My cousin was moving back to Chicago after a year of being my roommate. My bank account was empty after bailing on a shitty temp job a few months before. And my friends were virtually nonexistent after drifting away over the previous few years.
I’d had enough of mainstream society. The plan was to find an intentional community (i.e., commune) where I could live in harmony with Nature and also have friends I could count on. My parents’ house was supposed to be just a waystation in that transition.
I spent a week at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in remote NE Missouri in the spring of 2010. The people there felt like kindred spirits, but my anxiety flared up. I thought if I chose to stay there I would have to spend the rest of my life there. It was a dumb thought, but the reality was I felt very insecure, and the idea of spending any significant amount of time with strangers was terrifying. I needed to unburden myself totally of the years of pain that had built up, but I didn’t know in whom I could confide.
My parents were the only ones I had any faith in, so I stayed with them and returned to the corporate world. But I didn’t have enough faith to fully unburden myself to them, and I resented them for it. My anger toward them grew. I hung out with a few people, but they weren’t the people I wanted to hang out with, so I wasn't open to everything they had to offer.
I moved out in 2011, but that lasted about 2 ½ weeks. It was a house near Uptown Minneapolis, the neighborhood I’d previously lived in. There were 4 other residents, plus a dog that I didn’t remember the landlord mentioning [considering my brain was on the fritz, I might’ve forgotten, although it’s not something I would’ve forgotten in the old days (I’m not a dog person.)], and one resident’s 2 kids spent their weekends there. (I was sure the landlord hadn’t mentioned that.)
Notwithstanding those mitigating circumstances, I clearly wasn’t in the right head-space to handle roommates, certainly not 4. One woman was in NORML and asked if I wanted to smoke up (out? blaze up? I’m getting old.) with her on a weekend afternoon. I remember thinking, “No, I wanna get shit done.” She said not all varieties of marijuana will make one tired. Even so, my college experiences with pot had left me groggy and giggly. I didn’t find it enlightening; it didn’t open my Third Eye. (Or maybe I’m just Third Eye Blind! Hey, hey! A 90’s joke!)
There was a guy in his early 40’s who was quite friendly. He had just gotten in “the best shape of his life” on P90X. He definitely looked like an “after” picture. A woman about a decade younger spent many evenings with him, but he insisted they were not romantically involved. I wasn’t sure who was more delusional: she or him.
What convinced me to leave was the loud movie-watching (You thought I was gonna say “love-making,” didn’t you? Well, he was with a lady, so I’ll award a half-point.) in the bedroom next to mine. I knocked on the guy’s door twice one evening to turn it down, and he did, but it still kept me up. I moved out shortly thereafter, believing I wasn’t yet ready to be on my own again.
This gave me a better appreciation for my parents. I’d learned that there were worse places to live than home. My gratitude for them grew. My corporate job, however, was grinding me down, and I started getting anxiety (or panic) attacks, which I’d never really had before. I finally threw in the towel in March 2014.
(I’ve noticed a seasonal pattern in my mood. March tends to be emotionally fraught. Maybe that’s what Shakespeare meant by “Beware the Ides of March.” But I doubt it. Also, my anxiety seems to peak every 3 years, going back at least to ‘02. I can even remember getting my first taste of severe anxiety in the spring of ’99 as a junior in college. I thought it was just fear of the future.)
This brought me to my emotional nadir. For the next 2 months, I haunted Uptown, floating from the gym, to the coffee shop, to a restaurant and often to a movie, freakishly alone and self-consciously failing at Life. (Even remembering those feelings now is difficult. I’m afraid of getting sucked back into that vortex.) My parents were going on a Rhine river cruise that June, and the thought of being utterly alone for 2 weeks was horrifying.
With 2 weeks to go until their departure, I confessed my terror to them. They snapped into action and booked me a spot on their trip. Immediately, my anxiety ebbed. I think it was seeing them go to such extreme lengths (fiscally) to try and help me. But I also started taking medication after being extremely resistant to the idea for years. Such was the depth of my desperation.
The river cruise was very cool. (It deserves an essay of its own.) I started feeling better, esp. when the summer ended. (I’ve never been a fan of that season.) I got a part-time job shoveling snow for seniors. It was sporadic. I only worked after significant snowfalls. But that morphed into a lawn-mowing job in the summer (of 2015), which gave me about a dozen hours of work per week.
The work was physically demanding in the heat and mostly solitary, except for some chit-chat with my clients. Unfortunately, I had to quit when my back wouldn’t allow me to lift the mower into and out of my parents’ Honda Accord anymore. That sent me into another tailspin. I had to get back on the medication, which I’d come off of a month or two before.
I was alone for 2 weeks that August when my parents went on vacation. I spent a lot of time with my 99-year-old neighbor Harry, the only person I could find who was as desperate for companionship as I was. That helped me through, but it was still a rough patch, which for some reason got rougher when my parents returned.
I muddled through the fall and winter, attending local storytelling and spoken-word shows, StorySlamMN!, The Encyclopedia Show and The Moth, performing a few times. During the summers, I was volunteering with The Food Group. During the non-growing seasons, I was volunteering with Land Stewardship Project as an envelope-stuffer and data-entry dude. This helped give me a sense of purpose and brought me in contact with a bunch of cool folks. But I didn’t form any strong friendships in the sense of hanging out regularly, which is what I was looking for (in addition to networking, I guess).
What started to break me out of the rut was going to Oaxaca, Mexico in March ’16 with a Land Stewardship Project delegation coordinated by Witness for Peace. (I documented my personal experience of the trip thoroughly on this blog.) That gave me the confidence to try working at Goodwill, taking in donations through the drive-thru.
After just over a month there, I gave my two-weeks’ notice. It was a much more stressful job than I’d expected, and I was almost solely dealing with upper-middle-class folks (“my people,” basically) donating their extra stuff instead of dealing with people in need. But it was the first time I’d ever given two-weeks’ notice instead of quitting on the spot, and I served out the full term in spite of an extremely strong temptation to walk out many times.
That’s when my recovery actually went into overdrive, because I became an uncle. Technically, I became an uncle 3 months before, but August ’16 was when I finally met the little guy. His name is Patrick, and he is quite possibly the cutest nephew in the world (not least because he resembles his uncle).
Through Patrick, I’ve rediscovered the tenderness I used to have that was (mostly verbally) beaten out of me in adolescence. The key was expressing that affection in front of my parents and sister. They were the ones I’d withheld it from the most. By breaking down that barrier, I’ve reconnected with emotions I’d been holding back since I started middle school over 25 years ago.
Last October, I snagged a corporate temp job at a large financial company in downtown St. Paul. My co-workers were very nice and funny. I got over my fear of conducting business over the phone, making many calls each week and actually coming to enjoy it. I was able to appreciate the courtesy and consideration of the people on the other end of the line, instead of focusing on the bad or awkward calls. (I was also lucky: Unpleasant interactions were rare.)
The fact that it came to an abrupt, unflattering end after 10 months was distressing, but I’ve managed to hold it together, even enjoying the downtime to work out and write. I think that’s a result of “growing up.” The concept of maturity is nebulous, so I’m going to try and elucidate what I mean. In this case, it means I’ve taken responsibility for my situation and stopped blaming my parents, my friends and society in general. This doesn’t mean that those people and outside forces don’t bear any responsibility for my situation, just that, if I want a better situation, it’s ultimately up to me to make the changes necessary to bring that about. It’s a utilitarian conception of self-determination. (Actually, now that I’ve articulated it, it doesn’t seem that nebulous.)
For the last 8 years I’ve been trying to hold back an ocean of shame. Living with your parents is the ultimate failure of middle-class American life. That’s rock bottom. The mental effort of walling off the shame center of my brain chopped and screwed my memory and often made me poor company: anxious, peevish, distracted.
I didn’t think I could handle being inundated with all that shame. I didn’t think there was any (available) person who could comfort or guide me through that process. My best friends had gone, and I didn’t trust my parents to see me through that flood. I figured I could just hold it off until I moved out and got back on my feet again.
But my jobs were too stressful to allow me a sense of security; I didn’t think I could keep them long-term. And my attempts to make new friends came up empty, leaving me without the social network I thought I needed to make it in the world. I had to take a hard look in the mirror and see what I was doing wrong. I realized that it wasn’t living with my parents that made me feel immature, but the fact that I was acting like a teenager (or “failson,” for fellow listeners of Chapo Trap House).
I’ve come so far in repairing my relationship with my parents and developing gratitude for what I have instead of focusing on what I don’t, that I don’t really feel like a loser anymore. Sure, the waves of shame still lap at my feet now and then, but I think I’ve earned my place in the world as an adult and a Good Person.
But even now that I’m back in the ranks of the unemployed, I don’t feel ashamed like I used to. It helps that I was let go from this job instead of quitting. Also, I realized that I shouldn’t be shamed by the conventions of our society, because it’s a really messed-up society. But the real reason I’m not ashamed anymore is because I finally feel like an adult and a Good Person again.
Back in late October of 2009, when I moved in with my parents, I was in a tight spot. My cousin was moving back to Chicago after a year of being my roommate. My bank account was empty after bailing on a shitty temp job a few months before. And my friends were virtually nonexistent after drifting away over the previous few years.
I’d had enough of mainstream society. The plan was to find an intentional community (i.e., commune) where I could live in harmony with Nature and also have friends I could count on. My parents’ house was supposed to be just a waystation in that transition.
I spent a week at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in remote NE Missouri in the spring of 2010. The people there felt like kindred spirits, but my anxiety flared up. I thought if I chose to stay there I would have to spend the rest of my life there. It was a dumb thought, but the reality was I felt very insecure, and the idea of spending any significant amount of time with strangers was terrifying. I needed to unburden myself totally of the years of pain that had built up, but I didn’t know in whom I could confide.
My parents were the only ones I had any faith in, so I stayed with them and returned to the corporate world. But I didn’t have enough faith to fully unburden myself to them, and I resented them for it. My anger toward them grew. I hung out with a few people, but they weren’t the people I wanted to hang out with, so I wasn't open to everything they had to offer.
I moved out in 2011, but that lasted about 2 ½ weeks. It was a house near Uptown Minneapolis, the neighborhood I’d previously lived in. There were 4 other residents, plus a dog that I didn’t remember the landlord mentioning [considering my brain was on the fritz, I might’ve forgotten, although it’s not something I would’ve forgotten in the old days (I’m not a dog person.)], and one resident’s 2 kids spent their weekends there. (I was sure the landlord hadn’t mentioned that.)
Notwithstanding those mitigating circumstances, I clearly wasn’t in the right head-space to handle roommates, certainly not 4. One woman was in NORML and asked if I wanted to smoke up (out? blaze up? I’m getting old.) with her on a weekend afternoon. I remember thinking, “No, I wanna get shit done.” She said not all varieties of marijuana will make one tired. Even so, my college experiences with pot had left me groggy and giggly. I didn’t find it enlightening; it didn’t open my Third Eye. (Or maybe I’m just Third Eye Blind! Hey, hey! A 90’s joke!)
There was a guy in his early 40’s who was quite friendly. He had just gotten in “the best shape of his life” on P90X. He definitely looked like an “after” picture. A woman about a decade younger spent many evenings with him, but he insisted they were not romantically involved. I wasn’t sure who was more delusional: she or him.
What convinced me to leave was the loud movie-watching (You thought I was gonna say “love-making,” didn’t you? Well, he was with a lady, so I’ll award a half-point.) in the bedroom next to mine. I knocked on the guy’s door twice one evening to turn it down, and he did, but it still kept me up. I moved out shortly thereafter, believing I wasn’t yet ready to be on my own again.
This gave me a better appreciation for my parents. I’d learned that there were worse places to live than home. My gratitude for them grew. My corporate job, however, was grinding me down, and I started getting anxiety (or panic) attacks, which I’d never really had before. I finally threw in the towel in March 2014.
(I’ve noticed a seasonal pattern in my mood. March tends to be emotionally fraught. Maybe that’s what Shakespeare meant by “Beware the Ides of March.” But I doubt it. Also, my anxiety seems to peak every 3 years, going back at least to ‘02. I can even remember getting my first taste of severe anxiety in the spring of ’99 as a junior in college. I thought it was just fear of the future.)
This brought me to my emotional nadir. For the next 2 months, I haunted Uptown, floating from the gym, to the coffee shop, to a restaurant and often to a movie, freakishly alone and self-consciously failing at Life. (Even remembering those feelings now is difficult. I’m afraid of getting sucked back into that vortex.) My parents were going on a Rhine river cruise that June, and the thought of being utterly alone for 2 weeks was horrifying.
With 2 weeks to go until their departure, I confessed my terror to them. They snapped into action and booked me a spot on their trip. Immediately, my anxiety ebbed. I think it was seeing them go to such extreme lengths (fiscally) to try and help me. But I also started taking medication after being extremely resistant to the idea for years. Such was the depth of my desperation.
The river cruise was very cool. (It deserves an essay of its own.) I started feeling better, esp. when the summer ended. (I’ve never been a fan of that season.) I got a part-time job shoveling snow for seniors. It was sporadic. I only worked after significant snowfalls. But that morphed into a lawn-mowing job in the summer (of 2015), which gave me about a dozen hours of work per week.
The work was physically demanding in the heat and mostly solitary, except for some chit-chat with my clients. Unfortunately, I had to quit when my back wouldn’t allow me to lift the mower into and out of my parents’ Honda Accord anymore. That sent me into another tailspin. I had to get back on the medication, which I’d come off of a month or two before.
I was alone for 2 weeks that August when my parents went on vacation. I spent a lot of time with my 99-year-old neighbor Harry, the only person I could find who was as desperate for companionship as I was. That helped me through, but it was still a rough patch, which for some reason got rougher when my parents returned.
I muddled through the fall and winter, attending local storytelling and spoken-word shows, StorySlamMN!, The Encyclopedia Show and The Moth, performing a few times. During the summers, I was volunteering with The Food Group. During the non-growing seasons, I was volunteering with Land Stewardship Project as an envelope-stuffer and data-entry dude. This helped give me a sense of purpose and brought me in contact with a bunch of cool folks. But I didn’t form any strong friendships in the sense of hanging out regularly, which is what I was looking for (in addition to networking, I guess).
What started to break me out of the rut was going to Oaxaca, Mexico in March ’16 with a Land Stewardship Project delegation coordinated by Witness for Peace. (I documented my personal experience of the trip thoroughly on this blog.) That gave me the confidence to try working at Goodwill, taking in donations through the drive-thru.
After just over a month there, I gave my two-weeks’ notice. It was a much more stressful job than I’d expected, and I was almost solely dealing with upper-middle-class folks (“my people,” basically) donating their extra stuff instead of dealing with people in need. But it was the first time I’d ever given two-weeks’ notice instead of quitting on the spot, and I served out the full term in spite of an extremely strong temptation to walk out many times.
That’s when my recovery actually went into overdrive, because I became an uncle. Technically, I became an uncle 3 months before, but August ’16 was when I finally met the little guy. His name is Patrick, and he is quite possibly the cutest nephew in the world (not least because he resembles his uncle).
Last October, I snagged a corporate temp job at a large financial company in downtown St. Paul. My co-workers were very nice and funny. I got over my fear of conducting business over the phone, making many calls each week and actually coming to enjoy it. I was able to appreciate the courtesy and consideration of the people on the other end of the line, instead of focusing on the bad or awkward calls. (I was also lucky: Unpleasant interactions were rare.)
The fact that it came to an abrupt, unflattering end after 10 months was distressing, but I’ve managed to hold it together, even enjoying the downtime to work out and write. I think that’s a result of “growing up.” The concept of maturity is nebulous, so I’m going to try and elucidate what I mean. In this case, it means I’ve taken responsibility for my situation and stopped blaming my parents, my friends and society in general. This doesn’t mean that those people and outside forces don’t bear any responsibility for my situation, just that, if I want a better situation, it’s ultimately up to me to make the changes necessary to bring that about. It’s a utilitarian conception of self-determination. (Actually, now that I’ve articulated it, it doesn’t seem that nebulous.)
For the last 8 years I’ve been trying to hold back an ocean of shame. Living with your parents is the ultimate failure of middle-class American life. That’s rock bottom. The mental effort of walling off the shame center of my brain chopped and screwed my memory and often made me poor company: anxious, peevish, distracted.
I didn’t think I could handle being inundated with all that shame. I didn’t think there was any (available) person who could comfort or guide me through that process. My best friends had gone, and I didn’t trust my parents to see me through that flood. I figured I could just hold it off until I moved out and got back on my feet again.
But my jobs were too stressful to allow me a sense of security; I didn’t think I could keep them long-term. And my attempts to make new friends came up empty, leaving me without the social network I thought I needed to make it in the world. I had to take a hard look in the mirror and see what I was doing wrong. I realized that it wasn’t living with my parents that made me feel immature, but the fact that I was acting like a teenager (or “failson,” for fellow listeners of Chapo Trap House).
I’ve come so far in repairing my relationship with my parents and developing gratitude for what I have instead of focusing on what I don’t, that I don’t really feel like a loser anymore. Sure, the waves of shame still lap at my feet now and then, but I think I’ve earned my place in the world as an adult and a Good Person.
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