Unemployment Diaries: 6 Weeks, 100 Applications, 1 Offer, Plastic Bag Suffocation

Originally published/last updated on myearlyretirementjourney.com on Sep 13, 2019. 

It’s a pretty bad sign when the morning after a job offer you start googling how to suffocate with a plastic bag. Drastic, I know.

The worst part is I’ll probably show up bright eyed and bushy tailed that Monday morning. Ugh, I hate this.

Don’t I want a job? Isn’t this why I applied to 100 jobs in the last 10 weeks. But then why did I even quit my job 6 weeks ago?

As usual, I’m all over the place with my feelings. So, let’s try to organize these thoughts. Basically I quit my job at McDonald’s and now applied for and was offered a job at Burger King yesterday. The hiring manager kinda gave me an icky white-man feeling. I can’t tell anymore if it’s just my general disdain for what I foresee as the possible outcome for working for another bulbous white-man or if something bad actually happened.

All I know is I’m immediately filled with this sense of dread, much like how I felt going to my last job. (But it wasn’t everyday, so I stayed for 4 years.) The thing is I feel this way almost every time I have to leave the house to do something where the outcome is unknown or potentially negative. Given that I’m pretty much doing the same job but for a different company, I can’t help but think the outcome IS known. I’ll be exactly where I am now in four more years.

So then I started listing things I don’t like about this job (even before starting), and the list is so minor:

• Still in NC
• Still on the phones
• The pay is 10% more but I’m so sure when I applied for this job 2 years ago, it was 20% more. So now I’m feeling underpaid and I haven’t even started.
• Weird PTO (it’s ‘discretionary’)
• Weird mgmt (hiring manager is a line manager but also runs the department which was only just started 13 years ago)
• Weird shift (8.5 hour day vs 7 hour day; late shift till 8p vs till 7p, but still considered salary)
• Pricey health insurance
• Working remote not an immediate option

Then as I’ve done in the past, I dream of being a school aged child again when life was so ordered and the future so full of possibility. I think about the things I enjoyed about school:

• Structured periods of learning
• Structured breaks during the day
• Social/gab time
• Acknowledgement (grades, praise; don’t have to fight to be heard)
• Long breaks
• Progress
• Learning, learning, learning!

So basically: learning, breaks, acknowledgement.

How can I get some of those elements in my current life. I tried quitting my job to get the break part. But what I’m missing is the engagement in brain busting activities. I’m missing some social aspect but adult humans are so tricky. I’m missing the acknowledgement. Thinking maybe I’ll get good at a hobby, I go back to my OneNote list of extracurricular activities with my local Parks and Rec Dept, and that’s as far as I go.

Will I be stuck in this loop forever?

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