There is no stranger feeling than unemployment. It's not happy or sad. The feeling doesn't fit any one-word description. Love is a form of happiness, and nervousness is a form of excitement, and shame is a form of sorrow, but unemployment is much more complicated. It's fear, sadness, and guilt all joined together as one emotion. It's the feeling that everything in the world is wrong, but no one else is noticing.
Most religions claim there's invisible restrictions and barriers for all mortals. They say we're never totally at peace until we die and our souls are free. You can feel the very essence of that mortal shell bristling against you when you're unemployed for the first time in the real world. Being unemployed at a younger age is no problem. As long as a person has the label of "student" attached to them, there's no guilt. A part-time job or internship, ones that aren't intended as careers, don't matter in the long run. When school is your job, not having another job isn't a big deal. But things change when you're removed from your chosen career.
Society has taught us that we need to have a label. Without one, we have no status, and others have no choice but to assume the worst about us. If we're not a foreman, teacher, student, waitress, doctor, or some other specialist, then what are we? It's not the outfit that makes the person, it's the little business card in our pocket that helps others form a brief outline of our life. If someone is a banker, we can set a vision of their life in our minds. We can imagine what they do all day, how much money they make, and the struggles they face while earning it. We can't tell what happens after they work, but we don't care, either. We don't shake hands with someone for the first time and ask what they do on weekends. We ask what they do for a living.
If they have no answer, we are suspicious. Are they a drug dealer? A stripper? They must do something, and it must be horrible. If they're "between jobs", then they must be a drunk who can't hold a job.
The first day of not having a predetermined lifestyle is the most difficult. Though unemployment causes little harm to anyone, and is not a crime of God or law, we still feel like it were. Going outside during the day is slightly shameful, because others will wonder what this person in casual clothing is doing spending the day as they please. "These kids have it easy," assumes the woman in the dull work-friendly blouse. "These bums are leeching off society and not contributing," says the man in the suit.
Not contributing to society isn't the same as harming it, but that's the generally accepted hypothesis. Only extended bouts of unemployment, where one person takes too many benefits, is harmful. Many of us don't even take benefits at all. But we still get sneers and stares from the working public, and a general feeling of being second-class people.
So rather than bask in the joy of sweet freedom while waiting for our resumes or applications to generate job interviews, we spend unemployment worrying about being unemployed. Ironically, most working people spend their time at work being upset about having to work. Weekends are also spent worrying. If we do nothing all weekend, our time was wasted. If we do nothing all weekend while worrying frantically about how we're not doing anything, it feels more productive in the end.
This is the point when the theory comes full circle. We're miserable at work, and when we're not at work, we force ourselves to be miserable. Only when we are totally plastered off Michelob Light and/or Southern Comfort, like I was while writing today's column, do we truly feel free. And that, my wonderful children, is the reason God gave us booze in the first place. Sweet freedom is ours for the taking. It is on sale for $5.21 at the gas station.
