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Disemployment Day #1

My first full day of forced unemployment… or disemployment, I prefer to consider it. I woke up at the same time as Mr. Pinault and jumped in the shower. Mustn’t let the personal hygiene routine fall into complete disarray! I got strangely emotional when I peered into my sock drawer. After doing laundry last week, I had hurriedly rolled my socks because I could not squander time on trivial tasks like correctly rolling socks. Now, I have nothing but time… to roll socks.

I spent a good part of the day fielding emails and IMs from concerned former co-workers, colleagues, friends, and family. Most of the emails were of the “scream in the face” variety. You ever walk into a room and have someone just start screaming in your face? Man, it stresses me out. “BAHHHHH! LAY-OFF! RESUME, INTERVIEWS, REFERENCES, DECAYING ECONOMY! BAHHHHHH! BAHHHHH! NETWORK! NETWORK! BAHHHHH!”

The younger Meredith would have been gotten caught up in all the yelling and would have applied for half the jobs on Monster.com by now. She would have started selling her possession on EBay to earn a few extra dollars to go towards the giant sacks of flour with which she’d bake her daily bread.

But I’m older now, and inclined to agree with the Ridgewalker, who wrote to me: This is counter intuitive I think, unless you have been between jobs before, but I love both times it happened to me. I end up in this state of Zen like calm where life has simplified down to a few basic things and I have ample time to center myself.

I’ll subscribe to that newsletter of thought. I’m looking forward to having plenty of time for the basic things, like properly rolling my socks.

Posted in The 9 to 5.

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