No Job Blues

The steep price—and unexpected gift—of unemployment.

I have been unemployed since November 2018.

At the start, I was elated.

I had been continuously employed since the 7th grade. In 1987.

Back then I just worked an afternoon or two after school. Full time in the summers.

In college I worked multiple jobs—as much as 35 hours a week. Beginning at 17, I earned more money a year than my father. While taking a full course load. And volunteering several shifts a week at the campus crisis hotline.

My over-educated father’s underemployment left our family with too little money to afford to send me to the Ivy League. Unless I pitched in big time. So I did.

I waited tables, babysat, and sold ladies’ shoes during college summers to offset free and underpaid internships in journalism.

In graduate school, I had an unpaid internship at Saveur and a paid internship at BusinessWeek until I quit them both to work at a coffeeshop my second year. Where I could make lattes and smile at customers instead of writing and thinking on top of all the writing and …