Funemployed

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the age of freedom, it was the age of guilt. It was the season of appreciation, it was the season of disdain. It was the era of pride, it was the era of self-loathing. It was the time of Arrested Development, it was the time of arrested development. It was the summer of triviality, it was the summer of reality.

The year was 2010. The country was still hemorrhaging jobs, mired in recession. I and seven of my nine roommates had just graduated college in the middle of May. Most of us had met four years earlier in the honors dorm. Of the eight grads, only two of us had landed full time careers. Yet rather than moving home right away, we remained in this house through the summer, obligated to pay our lease through the end of August, and unwilling to look for sub-letters. These were strange days.

For the first time since middle school, before I had developed a sense of productive consciousness, I had virtually no day-to-day obligations. I began the summer with two part-time temp jobs, working a combined 25 hours a week, and both of those expired by the end of June. Every day I would check job postings, and if lucky, send out a few cover letters (to almost anywhere as long as it was in the country), but beyond that, I was free. There was no specter of school work breathing down my neck, no work to get up for in the morning, no sports team to train for. This was something I had longed after for ages, using such a goal to motivate myself through the toughest stretches; I had tabulated lists of things I could do, places I could go, if only, if only I had the time.

Now that I finally had it though, I couldn't truly unadulteratedly enjoy it. The weight of unemployment was constantly hanging over my head, and pressing down harder with each passing day. Every time I spent money on non-necessities, I would feel increasingly guilty and chide myself for my frivolity. It's fascinating how quickly a bank account can shrink when there are absolutely no deposits, and how quickly one's self esteem can contract along with it. If only I'd known this reprieve from employment would be temporary, I could have embraced the opportunity with open arms, instead every moment of indulgence felt slightly tainted and transient. And yet, thankfully in spite of this omnipresent guilt, I managed to have one of the most memorable summers of my life.

Being in the same boat as most of my friends certainly helped. Seeing them allowed me to realize my plight was the norm, not purely a reflection on me, and encouraged me to take advantage of the unique period (though on occasions when I was removed from them, at say extended-family get togethers, I would often feel very self conscious as the only unemployed adult). If all did go according to plan, this might be the last extended free time we had until retirement, I was oft-reminded. With their aid, I was able to salvage a significant amount of amusement from the summer, as much as my conscience would permit anyway.

Perhaps the best part of this period was that it coincided with the 2010 World Cup. As an avid soccer fan, it was amazing being able to watch virtually any game I wanted, despite the fact that the tournament was in South Africa and most matches were taking place on weekdays between 7 AM and noon. I absolutely loved it. I watched more games and was able to get more invested than during any previous tournament - (this from someone who was in Germany in June 2006, and who repeatedly woke up with my brother at 5 AM in the summer of 2002 to watch nail-biters such as Ecuador vs. Croatia or Germany vs. Saudi Arabia). I probably read more ESPN articles per day than at any time in my life (and I must give them major props for going all out in their coverage).

What made it even better though was that my roommates, never overt soccer supporters, fully embraced the Cup as well. We, and often a few visiting comrades, would pack into the living room to watch every US match. To this day one of my top three sports memories is watching Landon Donovan's goal in the waning seconds of the Algeria game. The living room was in a state of utter euphoria. Mostly still clad in pajamas, we were all screaming our lungs out and leaping around like mad men. I instinctively wrapped my arms around Joe, who happened to be nearest me, as we jumped up and down in unison, caterwauling as if we'd just won the lottery. I had to fight back tears. I was away at camp during the US team's miracle win over Mexico in the second round in 2002, and had been left with nothing but disappointment from the Yanks during the other World Cups I'd seen; I couldn't believe they finally hadn't let me down. Yes, the loss to Ghana in the round of 16 was pretty disappointing and very avoidable (cough-Ricardo-Clark), but that will never ever diminish the joy they had already given me.

The next best revelation of the summer came in the form of restaurant trivia. I had always been a trivia nut and taking part in any sort of organized trivia competition had always been a desire of mine. It was even on the bucket list Johnson encouraged me to write in the fall of '07. So, for my birthday that year, which was near the start of the summer, I decided to finally take the plunge and went to a local pizza place for their weekly trivia night with some friends. We split up into two teams because we had so many people in our party, and we won first and second place. Our prizes included t-shirts to the restaurant, gift-cards, and our choice of leftover advertising memorabilia they had from the bar.

We loved it and it became a weekly routine. By the end of the summer we had decked out most of the house residents with free shirts and the living room was covered in the extraneous beer decorations we had collected - including scores of coasters, inflatable cans, and metal signs. Further, having no real income, our desire to win the gift cards increased dramatically as they could potentially provide us all with one free meal for the week (though the down side was things would get irrationally tense if we gambled and disagreed, then lost). But I knew all that time Sporcling and watching VH1 would finally pay off! It also helped that the pizza was delicious and the host was hilarious.

Another fun and economical diversion we embraced was bowling. Just before summer started Joe had seen a deal that provided an absurd number of bowling passes for a ridiculously small price. Not being a huge bowling fan, I was sort of luke-warm on the idea at first, but this too ended up being a smashing success. It was an activity we could do for virtually no money, in an air-conditioned room, with a large group of people, at any time of day. The passes even worked for Extreme bowling (or whatever they called it there).

We went every couple weeks, but one particular afternoon was especially memorable. Joe and I had also often talked about how we wanted to get cheesecake from this particular cheesecake shop in Uptown (this was also on the bucket list actually). When we finally went there explicitly one weekend to fulfill that dream we were saddened to see that the location had closed. In the window there was a notice that another location was still open out in the 'burbs though. Joe looked it up online later and found out it was pretty close to the bowling alley, so one weekday about five or six of us decided to make a whole day of it, going bowling and then for cheesecake afterward. Right before we left someone else suggested we should tack on a game of soccer to the day's itinerary, so we threw a ball and some sports gear in the car as well.

We began with a couple rounds of early Tuesday afternoon Extreme bowling - and there is no more hip time to hit the lanes than that. We bet a quarter each on the game and I came away the proud winner of $1.25. Walking out into the blazing sun after living in a world of black-lights for 90 minutes does do a number on the retinas though. Next we drove over to the address Joe had written down for the cheesecake shop. We arrived five minutes later at what was unmistakably a warehouse.

"Ah - Joe - are you sure you wrote that down right?" asked the driver. The rest of us begin laughing nervously and exchanging glances as Joe re-confirmed on his smart phone that this was correct. One person suggested we should just leave because we clearly had no business here. I almost agreed with him but Joe was confident the website said this was a location where you could buy by the slice and he got out of the SUV. We followed slowly, walking into a garage area with a list of signs to all of the warehouse's tenants and office numbers and found the one we were seeking. We tentatively made our way deeper into the bowels of the building and found the place. We peered through the glass and saw a lone woman inside manning the desk.

"Ah - hi - can we, um, buy cheesecake buy the slice here?" Joe ventured as he sidled into the office, the rest of us creeping in behind.

"Yes, yes, come in!" replied the cheery receptionist. We all let out a collective sigh of relief. The experience could hardly have been more pleasant. There was a second hidden room with a whole case of cheesecake in every possible flavor you can imagine. The employee was incredibly nice and we all had a good laugh as we told her our story of how we were so confused by the setting we almost didn't even come in. As for the cheesecake? So freaking good. I had mocha flavored. We each brought our slices over to the soccer field and let them thaw out while we played a pick-up game for an hour or so, then ate them ate a shaded picnic table afterward.

The soccer too was a fun surprise as it was the very first time some of us had played together after four years of acquittance and was spurred by the World Cup kick we were still riding. As with most of the activities that summer, I only wish we'd discovered our mutual love earlier, but at least we got a couple games in. So after devouring our cheesecake we piled into the car and headed back home, only to follow that up with another round of pizza and trivia shortly thereafter, it being a Tuesday and all. That was one fine day.

As prefaced though, the great contradiction of this summer was how much fun we had in spite of the real world problems that loomed ever closer, and by the time July rolled around I was feeling the pocket-book pinch. I wasn't broke or anything (it had been at least 18 months since the last time my card was rejected), but I was desperate for any sort of income to at least stem the tidal wave of debits on my account. As the listings for full time jobs in my field seemed to be fewer and further apart I started to think outside the box as I continued my career search. I had experience proofreading papers as a paid tutor in the dorms and discovered there are websites where you can submit bids to proofread people's papers online. I thought it would be a perfect way to pick up some extra scratch without ever leaving the house, but I never actually got a chance to do so because the competition was ridiculously fierce. A few users had absurd amounts of experience and would land seemingly all of the posted jobs. I'm not quite sure how one breaks into that game when the market it so well cornered but it certainly didn't seem worth the effort, it would have to be a full time job in itself. I also applied to several agencies to become a writing tutor for younger kids but despite my two years of experience I never even got a call-back.

I would also scan Craigslist once or twice a day and see if there were any temp type things worth looking into. Most of the time I came up empty, but once I lucked out. The very top most recent post was an ad where you could sign up to join this newly developed website for movie fans, write a few reviews about any movies you so chose, surf around the chat boards a bit, provide a summary of your thoughts on the site, and get paid $20. I hopped on that like a child playing whack-a-mole, and it's a good thing because when one of my roommates got home from his job at the grocery store that night I told him about it and they were already turning down applicants. As someone who applied and failed multiple times to become a movie critic for the college newspaper, I could hardly believe my luck. This, to date, was the only time I have received compensation for my writing (not that they cared a lick about the quality). After PayPal took their cut I was left with about $18.50. That was the only money I made in the month of July (and was about $18.50 more than I made in the month of August - trivia winnings not included).

As also previously mentioned, I had always looked forward to unbridled free time because there were so many things I wanted to do that I normally didn't have time to act upon. Unfortunately, most of them required money, and the ones that didn't generally required lots of people and coordination, which was virtually just as tough. I did briefly attempt one such project, but it never got out of the planning stages as it quickly became apparent how hard it would be to pull off. The scars of all the months (let's be honest: years) spent on unfinished high school activities were still fresh. With all that extra time to burn, the number of embarrassing activities I began to engage in rose exponentially.

Within hours of finishing A Tale of Two Cities, I found myself on YouTube watching the entirety of the Wishbone episode modeled after it. I also read this book. Dear mercy I read THIS book. Okay, the former shouldn't come as much of a surprise. I wrote a letter to a movie studio trying to persuade them to make movie X instead of movie Y (needless to say, I have yet to receive my thank you note and six figure check in return for my consultation). I watched the entirety of a children's PBS show on Netflix and then (shoot me now) read fan-fiction of it --- multiple times. I watched a Patrick Swayze mini-series in its entirety as well. To exacerbate these images, that summer was swelteringly hot (avg. daytime temp in my bedroom was 86), and I didn't have a window AC unit in my room, so the majority of these activities were probably done while I was wearing nothing but boxers or athletic shorts and eating microwave lunches. Thank goodness for Venetian blinds.

All this while, my roomies had nearly all become obsessed with a new video game - ModNation Racers, and they would spend hours upon hours designing new characters profiles and tracks to race with, or simply racing each other or online foes in game play. One in particular became so infatuated he literally stayed up all night designing tracks, he became one of the 20 top ranked racers in the world, some of his character profiles were downloaded thousands of times, and he had one of his designed tracks featured in an online zine. He'd never touched the game before May.

When not playing ModNation, the daytime activity of choice in the living room was almost always collective viewing of Game Show Network - most notably Baggage and Family Feud reruns. I came to loathe these pastimes and would retreat to my room with increasing frequency in the months after the World Cup ended, humorously trying to establish a false sense of superiority that I wasn't wasting my time like them, whilst instead participating in the unforgivably lame activities already listed.

I also burned through Netflix discs like it was nobody's business. I upped my membership to two-discs-at-a-time and a few times would literally wait for the mail man to come so I could alleviate my boredom. Additionally, my tedium reached such levels that I distinctly remember being excited to discover one day that I'd run out of stamps (for those few stickler places who still required mailed-in job applications), because now I had a reason to get out of the house, even if it was only to walk to the post office.

Perhaps surprisingly, one thing we didn't do much of at all that summer was partying. Never being a big drinker, going out to the bars didn't seem that appealing, and as cash strapped as I was, it made ignoring that option even easier. Plus the vast majority of the bars within walking distance kind of blew. Instead, we'd go bowling, or stay home and watch nostalgic movies together like Toy Story, The Lion King, The Brave Little Toaster, or most memorably, Brink!.

Over the course of the summer I did have a few interviews as well. One was in Missouri, one in Chicago, two were right in the cities. None of them went anywhere and quite frankly I'm glad, I was bitter-sweet at best about each of these positions. As money starved as I was I may have even turned some of them down had I received an offer, and it stunk that none of them reimbursed me for travel (the Chicago one alone cost me $26 for 2.5 hours of parking). Each one definitely helped me practice my interviewing skills though.

As much as the prospect of going back to school appalled me, as August rolled on I started to accept that my resume likely just wasn't good enough in this job climate to get a full-time position on a bachelors degree alone (in the end I applied to somewhere around 90 jobs, beginning in December '09). I also feared my technical skills would continue to fade and be outdated soon. My ego had suffered a few small blows, but on the whole I really did believe it was forces largely beyond my control that had created this situation, and I'm thankful I didn't get more down on myself. (In the times when I did get a bit sad, it's kind of depressing how much it helped to simply look at my resume - seeing this cataloged list of accomplishments did always make me feel a bit better, it was my self prescribed pep talk.) I began looking into grad school and charting a course for the next year. I would move back home, get some minimum wage job during the fall semester, then move back up to the cities second semester, enrolling in classes and hopefully getting some temp work in my field. A humbling prospect yes, and it certainly made me rethink taking so many Cinema/Media and English courses, but it didn't feel like a hit to my dignity when so many others I knew were in the same situation.

Of course in the meantime I kept looking for jobs just in case. It had become a routine well before now. Five days before we were set to move out, during the last week of August, one great job popped up. It was so good in fact I assumed I had virtually no chance, but I whipped up a cover letter, attached my resume and a few other docs, and sent my materials within fifteen minutes of spotting it. I was shocked when I received a phone call the very next morning and they wanted to bring me in for an in-person interview right away - not even a phone screening first. I didn't want to get mine or anyone else's hopes up so I only told one friend ahead of time, and he wasn't even that close. The symmetry was almost spooky, the first interview was literally the day after our lease expired. How many people are able to demarcate the stages of their life that perfectly?

There was still one final weekend left to be had with the crew though and we made the best of it. We had our fantasy draft scheduled for Saturday morning and the two guys who had since moved out of town were coming back just for that. Friday night was one roomie's birthday as well, so we prefaced the draft with a trip to a German bar and a night of playing Madden until 3 AM. After the draft we played pickup football in the park for a couple hours, where we ran into another old friend, then followed that up with Olive Garden's never ending pasta bowl, succeeded by a throw-back to the freshmen dorms with some system-link Halo 1, and finished out the evening with 12 of us chilling out on our porch until the wee hours of the morning. It was wonderful and terribly sad all at once.

On Sunday those of us still in the house began the long process of packing, made easier as our TV and internet service were pulled around noon. At this point there were six or seven of us still there. That night we walked over to one of our favorite places, a malt shop near campus, for one final visit. After returning we packed a bit more and then gathered in the attic to watch some Arrested Development - one of our earliest traditions. I'm getting bleary eyed just writing this. None of us wanted it to end. That's one of the happiest moments I can recall, crammed together leaning against a wall, watching Arrested Development on a laptop at two in the morning (the TVs and furniture were all packed away). We all got a little choked up as we returned to our respective rooms, regretfully acknowledging that we couldn't put it off any further.

I was probably awake for another hour or two; I was too overwhelmed with sentiment to sleep (plus my bed was gone). I had been putting it out of my mind for most of the week, scared of the sadness it would incur, but I'm glad I let it wash over me during the last couple of days so I could fully appreciate them. I believe I've stated before that I probably enjoyed high school more than college, but as I was forced to reflect on everything in those waning moments of that chapter in my life, it became glaringly obvious that I'd made some pretty outstanding friends up there as well.

The next day there was still a strong undercurrent of emotion, but we had to largely ignore it as we worked our tails off packing our possessions, getting them into vehicles, and scrubbing down every inch of the house. We took a break in mid afternoon for one final custom - a Fun Run. There wasn't much too it, the practice merely consists of walking to the nearest convenience store and buying some refreshments, but this too was an activity we started in the dorms with their built in snack shops, and continued as we moved off campus a block away from a corner store. It made for a nice bookend.

Finally, around 7:30 it was time to say my goodbyes. I exchanged hearty hugs with each of the remaining folks out in the front yard. As I walked over to my car I heard one of them say morosely, "and then there were five."

There are a dozen other good anecdotes from that summer floating about in my brain right now: stories about the two random roommates (one female) who moved into the house, the secret beach we found, how I missed out on our graduation celebration at a Brazilian steakhouse because I was at my own touching farewell lunch for my student job, how I twice was summoned out to my temp job in the 'burbs (an hour bus ride each way) only to be told I wasn't needed after 45 minutes of work, how I stumbled onto and was yelled off of the set of Transformers 3 (seriously), how I was literally minutes away from driving through a tornado, and a few more tales probably not appropriate for this forum.

I think I've gone on enough though, we don't need to flesh those out. The point is it was a summer of opposites: full of boredom and excitement, fun and fear, confidence and petty bitterness. One last great hurrah of uncertainty before joining the shallower highs and lows of a 9-5 routine.

What immediately followed my departure from the house and the metro though was, briefly, an even stranger limbo. I had my first interview on September 1st. I drove home the night of August 30th to an empty house - my parents were on vacation. August 31st I spent the entire day in the house, unpacking a bit, watching a movie or two, and primarily, prepping for the interview. It was almost certainly the first day in my life since infancy where I never spoke to a person. Wednesday I had my interview, it went pretty well, and I stayed with my brother that night, driving home Thursday morning. My parents didn't return home until the middle of the following week and in the interval I did almost absolutely nothing of value, and yet, it was amazing. It was the first time in my entire life where I was home totally alone for more than a day. Every other instance when my parents left my brother was at least around.

My joy came from a combination of the novelty and the stark contrast to the living arrangement I had just come from. Don't get me wrong, I love my old roommates, but after 24 consecutive months of living in a century old house with 10 college aged guys of varying hygiene levels, owned by a slumlord leasing company, with no yard to speak of, in the middle of a noisy student neighborhood, in the heart of a major metro, going home was heaven. I went from all that to having a (comparatively) enormous house in the middle of a quiet suburban-esque subdivision all to myself, with no real responsibilities to speak of. I could do whatever I wanted without having to worry about bothering or being bothered by anyone else. It was as if I was living out some fantasy of home ownership that I never even realized I had.

More than anything what I remember is the calm. It was so nice. I would just stand out in the driveway in the middle of the night listening to the crickets and marveling at how cool and quiet everything was - a far cry from my first floor bedroom the week before where people could be heard partying at all hours and I once received a knock on the window at 4 AM from a guy looking to score drugs. Instead I would stroll around my high school grounds at two in the morning and not have to worry about seeing a person, much less being mugged. I could sleep where and whenever I wanted, wear whatever I wanted, sing as loud as I wanted. I could go over to the football field and kick field goals on a Monday afternoon. Plus, I didn't even feel guilty because I was still waiting to hear back about the interview. The one thing I did feel a little bad about is that I had some friends who were still in town, but I actually didn't notify them of my arrival for several days because I just wanted bask in that isolation for a bit. I'm glad it only lasted for a week, because I think it would have been spoiled had it gone on much longer, but I'll never forget that time.

What happened next I've detailed before. While I did know as it was happening that those months between graduation and landing my first big job were unlike anything I'd experienced prior, in the time since then I've only come to appreciate in greater detail just how special they were. I always heard about it via various media depictions growing up, but the real world really is so much more of a pattern. Yes you develop routines during school, but they change every four or five months, and you have extended breaks in between. None of that is true out here - and that last long stretch between those two epochs was a truly fascinating time of transition. While parts of it were pretty taxing, I'm very glad I got to go through it. So I suppose, if you look hard enough, maybe there have been some tiny upsides to the Great Recession. If you find yourself in a similar situation, try and find that silver lining. (And if you've made it this far, thanks for the dedication, I know I got a little carried away on this one.)