On unemployment

It’s intersting how we describe employment and its opposite state, unemployment. Why not freedom and unfreemdom instead? I jest. It’s been about 7 months since I begun my stint into the world of unemployment. I’m surprised how fast its gone by and also by the slowness at which it moves fast. I went on three trips in the interim, 5 weeks in Europe in July, 10 days in Japan in October and 12 days in Japan (again) in January. The trips felt like conveyer belts, spitting me forward through them and yet leaving behind moments of clear recollection, and the inbetweens were the opposite, slow and plodding yet blending together. I suppose thats how life is sometimes, rushing forward then pulling back, leaving you off balance and unsure which direction you’re facing.

One thing I’m not rushing is trying to find a job. I think a part of me is afraid that I’ll be miserable in one and so is slowing down the more responsible part of me that wants to get started on the road to financial independence. And so, unlike most unemplyed peoples, I find myslef not stressing about the job search so much and more stressed about how to fill up my time with ‘useful’ activities. One part of having free time and energy is that suddenly a lot of things become possible. The trap is trying to find the best, most efficient way to use up your time, like a manager with a timesheet and a love of scheduling. You start to think, oh, I could have spent this time learning Japanese or coding a new cool project, but actually I also wanted to practice my jazz piano skills and yeah I want to climb 7a too. Everything is doable and maybe thats what makes it not. I’ve been trying to love the process instead of hoping to get certain things done before I get a job, but I’m worried that once I do, my interests will start to slip from my grasp, like when I was working full time at my internships.

Lately I’ve been feeling this angsty energy, like theres a big squireel in me that wants to get out. I’m not sure if it’s my abundance of creative energy (haha) but I have a suspicion that something in me wants to work. And not work as in the show up to the office and work kinda work but the WORK work. The creating of something big, the thinking of something new, the collaborating with someone as psyched as you. The bringing into the world of something that only you could come up with, maybe not in the final object but in the executing and desiging and imagining of it. I hope that by writing more on this site I’ll be able to release a bit of this energy in me, even if it’s not a great read. Perhaps I’ll set myself some topics to write about and riff off of those. I want to code, too, in a playful way and a curious way. Just learning and being amazed by ideas is something I’ve missed.

Friends are so important and precious too, and being unemployed means that you have more time to bother most of them. What I miss most about university is that spontaeneous and also regular gathering of people. I could go down and have supper from my apartment on campus randomly and also see the same friends at my ccas every week. Now its hard to surround myslef like that, although I’ve tried to make that effort. I’m still not sure how I want my friendships to be like but I suppose it depends on the friend. I just know that I want to meet more people and try more things and I hope I can find avenues to open me up to more seredipity and friendship in my life.

Read, create, think, play, move. That’s my unemployment.