Being Unemployed

Dear FHA,

Recently I quit my job and am in the process of looking for a new one. Things are pretty dismal and I was wondering if you had some advice on things I could do in the interim to keep my spirits up?

Sincerely,
Unemployed Person


Dear UP,

It can be a challenging thing to keep your moral high enough to not run to the medicine cabinet and down a bottle and a half of Tylenol just to end the suffering. Here is some helpful advice to make the time you spend looking a bit more chipper.

1. Put your personal health on the back burner
Lots of people take this time to better their life as the stress of their old job is gone. I think it's a waste of time and resources. You could start cooking more healthy meals at home. You could take an hour out of your day to exercise. You might even be tempted to give up drinking while job hunting. What you might not realize is you can do all those things when you finally get a job that you hate again. If you occupy your time with making your life better in general, you might forget what a giant loser you are for being broke. Take this time to start smoking, doubting your self worth, and drinking the pain of borrowing money from family members away. You fantasized about the time you could just sit on your couch in a whiskey haze for a week, so take advantage of it. Even if you have to cancel an interview because the days blurred together and you find yourself drunk at 8AM before your first real chance at a job in months. All you would end up doing is shortening your personal misery, which is the driving force behind getting a quality job.

2. Don't share your misery with your family
It might seem like a good idea to tell your mother how terrible you feel, but do you really want her to know what a failure you are? Make sure you only talk to them on the rare occasions when you book a temp gig that will only pay enough to recoup the cost of your train ride and lunch. This way they will know you are "still working" and not just sitting on your ass getting drunk. The only other time it is acceptable to contact them is when your rent is due. Make sure to contact in a drunken weepy mess asking them to send you a large sum of money because you have failed for another consecutive month to get a job. This way the conversation is short and there will be no room for them to shame you more than you already have shamed yourself.

3. Start blogging about your your woes
This is a great outlet for you to put how mad you are at the system for failing you. Make sure your name is highly visible on it as well. If you do it often enough, it will surely drive any prospective employers who have a half a brain to Google your name to the page. They definitely won't hire you based on the content, but it will drive up the number of page hits so you can collect your 3 cents from the Google Ads you've placed on it. This will allow you more free time to update and still make just enough money to fool yourself into believing you could make a living by bitching online.

4. Get more credit cards
Just because you're broke doesn't mean you have to live like you are. Get a bunch of cards that you will only make a minimum payment on (if at all, am I right?) as to maintain that little slice of lower middle class you have come to love. Don't tell your friends you can't go out with them because you're broke, but instead pick up the tab when you do just to let them know that you're doing just fine. This is also your chance to improve your DVD and video game collection. Those outlets will give you the chance to waste hours that you normally would spend looking for a job and being frustrated on things that mean nothing in the grand scheme of life.

All in all UP, you should just say fuck it and try to live the lifestyle you thought you were going to have if you never had to work again. Only after you have exhausted all your monetary resources, your family has disowned you, and type two diabetes has fully set in should you make a bee line to those bottles of Tylenol. Just make sure to get them now and store them away, otherwise you'll be picking change out of the sofa to finance your exit from this fuck all world.

Sincerely,
FHA