Unemployed

I, like 12.7 million other Americans am unemployed.  It's so surreal, finding yourself a part of a statistic that you are almost completely helpless to change.  Think about it.  Everyone knows how "tough" our economy is.  For a single receptionist job paying minimum wage, an employer may receive over 200 applications!  Day after day, I comb through the virtual world of want ads hoping to find something, anything to apply for that could result in a job for me that would pay me more than I am making on unemployment.  Since losing my job 50 days ago, I have applied for over 25 positions.  I have only heard back from one (didn't get it---ha ha).  The rest of the jobs just hang out there in the realm of "maybe".  Believe me when I say folks, living with "maybe" isn't easy. 

Being unemployed is disorienting for someone like me.  I like a certain orderliness to my days.  Get up, get ready for the day, do my bible study, have breakfast, leave for work by 8am.  Do my work, come home, make dinner for my family, visit with my hubby, bed by 10pm.  Sounds so monotonous doesn't it?  You know what's even worse than monotony?  Boredom.  Endless days of no where to go and nothing to do.  I don't tell people that I am bored any more.  I have learned the hard way that people reject the notion that I could be bored in a knee jerk fashion.  Do you know how many people tell me they would love to be bored?  I remember when I was working, I was always wishing for more time to_____________. Fill in the blank with any of the million little things that need to be done as a working mother.  Think about having eight hours dropped into your day to get all of those million little things done.  And done they are.  Now what?  No laundry to do, it's all caught up.  Toilets are cleaned.  Cat is brushed.  Lint picked off the snuggle blankets.  For a while, I tried watching television during the middle of the day. It just felt...unproductive. I feel guilty for sitting there knowing that Rene' is out in the heat working his tooshie off and I am sitting on a couch watching reruns of Mork and Mindy.

Why go to bed at 10pm when you don't have to get up and go to work?  Why get up at 5am when you can sleep until 9 and no one cares?  It feels so wrong to me.  I sometimes feel embarrassed for sleeping in.  As though staying up late and sleeping in makes me a "slacker".  The interesting thing is that when I was a "stay at home" mom and not "unemployed", I never had such guilt.  I would sleep in with my kiddos, watch "Toy Story" in the middle of the afternoon, stay up super late catching up on my reading and all with no guilt.  In the past few years I have shed that freedom and become weighted down with the guilt of the working woman.  

I have read a lot of books.  I cannot afford to buy them any more so I make a bi-weekly journey to the library, load myself up with 12-14 books and go home.  I get excited when I have new books.  Something new to look forward to.  I read and read and read and read.  I read until until my eyes hurt.  I find a lot of solace in those pages.  I have time to read long, sweeping novels again; Beach Music, The Tea Rose, Sepulchre, Water for Elephants have all captured my imagination for a time.  I have no desire to live in the worlds I read about, but it is nice to be an unseen observer hovering above someone else's tragedy for a while.

Unlike most of my other blogs, I have no overarching "lesson" I have learned to offer.  I am writing this because I want to share what being unemployed is really like...I always have had a desire to people to learn from my experiences.  I don't want to end this blog without saying I have hope.  I do.  Why I do is plain; I am a child of God.