Unemployment is nothing that I wish on any friend or enemy.

Unemployment is disturbingly similar to a breakup but it is so much worse because your entire lifeline depends on your career. At least when you break up with a guy, you have your friends, local bar, and job to throw yourself into. With a job loss, you can continually harass your busy, employed friends to hang out with you (but they won’t because jobs, babies, real life obligations…), attend the local bar (at a huge detriment to your savings account), and no longer have an office to escape your break-up pain from.

I never understood the term “the mat was thrown out from under me” until I lost a job. I can’t remember a period in my life where I have felt this miserable, angry and useless; and mind you — I have been dumped multiple times in my dating lifetime. Every other day, I crawl under a rock (and by this –  I mean the corner of my bedroom…) and bawl my eyes out. Apparently, this is cathartic, therapeutic, or whatever you want to call it.

On the other days though — something funny happens. I embrace this ridiculous turn of events and do those sporadic weekday events that no one in an office can do (or people that live in cold climates can do). I go to the beach at 2 PM on a Tuesday, I sneak into a neighborhood pool at 3 PM on Thursday or drink at multiple locations on a Monday Cinco de Mayo. I book last minute trips to New York City on miles to see how the other coast lives (BTW, they have effing fun). Somehow, I find myself befriending the elusive group of “self-employeds” in Los Angeles and finding a very cool group of people that found a miraculous way to work for themselves. And I find myself smiling and having adventures that have not been possible since my college days.

There isn’t  a moral to this blog story besides that on the nights that I behave like a drunken buffoon with no cares in the world, I smile more than on the days when I cry on the floor of my room.