Captain's Log Week One: Solitude

It has officially been one week that I have been out of work.

For as long as I remember, I have had part time jobs, throughout the summer and during school and college. After college, I was hired a recruitment agency for a temporary position, killed it, and was hired full time.

I say that I killed it only because that's how I have always been: I came hot out of the gates with a burning desire to reach the end before I have a look around and realize what I might be tearing up on the course before the finish line.

This job was a dream. I was arriving every day in the wondrous Grand Central Station, swiping into my office building and being shot up to the 22nd floor where the music was always playing, people were always friendly, and there was a keg waiting for us on Friday afternoons, yes, in the middle of the office.

SO WHAT COULD BE WRONG WITH THAT?

A lot. I was so enchanted by my co-workers and the friendships I had developed with them that I forgot: I'm a writer. I'm a creator. I'm an explorer. I'm spending the bulk of my waking hours doing a job that I feel no immediate attachment to, just so I could be part of the crew that I had learned to love so much and pay my student loans. I felt devoted to my supervisors, and a true duty to my friends to be there - but this isn't college, this isn't summer camp, this is adulthood. "My Career"- the very thing that I apparently paid tens of thousands of dollars to my university for.

So I left my easy-enough, money-providing, free-drinks job so I could find what I want to do.

First stop: unemployment.

I continued to wake up, each day of the week, around 7 o'clock.

I read two full novels, watched the entire first season of True Detective, half of Orange Is The New Black: Season 1, ran 5 miles, went up about two shades of sun-bathed tan, enrolled to an online course for Teaching English as a Second Language, filed for unemployment, and cried.

It's hard going from part of the normal grain to sitting all alone, staring out your front door with a cup of coffee for an hour. It's FOMO to the max. But ultimately, it's a sacrifice.

MORAL to all those who are unhappy: I haven't figured out yet what I want to do or what I should be doing. But the first step was tough: I knew what it was I was doing every day was not it.

Also a bonus: Most every single one of my friends who I left at the office, including some that I thought were poor at keeping in touch, have kept touch.

Week one recap:
Still have friends
Lots of alone time
Lots of sun-bathing
A lot less stress
A lot to still search for...