Gainfully UNemployed
Reflecting on building new routines, adjusting to unemployment, and preparing to move abroad while brimming with excitement for a new chapter.
Today the prospect of moving abroad feels real in another new way as I am “officially” unemployed.
My last day at my US employer was technically back in December but owing to the end-of-year closure we were lucky to enjoy, it felt like everyone’s last day and not just mine. I wasn’t disappointed by that, though, since I prefer a whisper to a bang when it comes to making an exit. So I was expecting the annual two weeks of uncertainty about what day of the week it is and whether or not anything will be open…but now?
I’ve reminded myself four times that it is Monday.
I’ve reminded William twice that it is Monday.
And it isn’t just any Monday, according to the federal government’s calendar!
And yet, this Monday, I wasn’t rushing to log on or check Slack for any reason. I haven’t checked the headlines and I still don’t know who won any of the Golden Globes last night. If I’m being perfectly honest, I stayed in my bathrobe until well after eleven…and that’s only partially because most of my remaining clothes are in vacuum sealed bags.
On the one hand, I am sad to not show up on Zoom and care about the things I cared about when I was being paid to care about them. As a product manager, I came to love my development teams and I would love to hear how the members of my teams spent their time away.
The first work week of the year is usually a flurry of activity with everyone realizing it is finally time to “circle back” on all the things no one could give two shits about in December. Collectively, the workforce shakes off the restful mantle and begins to take up the business of another year. New plans are made, new deadlines begin to loom, and before we know it, we’ve settled back into the normality of everyday life.
My new normal looks shockingly (and excitingly) different! It is strange to go without the daily connections and tasks that defined my life for the past years. American culture focuses so intensely on what you do for a living - it’s the most common getting to know you question.1 So much of the intrinsic value of a human in our society is what they are paid to do.
What is my value without an “occupation?”
What direction does my life take if it isn’t towards a roadmap item or commercial goal?
There was a huge part of my life that came before my most recent job and there’s presumably more to come now that I’ve moved on to whatever this next phase will be once it emerges from the cocoon of packing materials and customs forms. Instead of spending the day chasing to dos and following up, William and I laid out everything we want to take abroad in our dining room and painstakingly packed every item into boxes that we then weighed to determine just how much we can fit before it would make more sense to hire a moving company.
Unlike many, we won’t be settled back into anything resembling a routine for some time. We move into a hotel on Sunday because the certified recycling company comes early Monday morning to take the mattress away. Even without the structure of employment, William and I still have our daily rituals; however, in ten days, it’s wheels up on whatever it is that comes next.
There’s plenty about our lives abroad that I can’t understand yet and so very much of it I can’t predict…and yet, beneath all that uncertainty, I feel confident in the knowledge that whatever we’re bringing with us weighs less than two hundred pounds.
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