The Stages of Unemployment

This is probably only relevant to the 20-something's out there. I have noticed there seem to be particular things that many of us have done.....

Stage 1: Fun 
Immediately following your layoff, you notify one or two members of your family and one friend. It's not exactly an easy thing to tell people, so you can rely on the magic of the grapevine to spread this news. Don't worry-- in a few days, all of your friends will know. Now, you think of all the things you can do now that you don't have a job. Staying up super late? Drinking on a weeknight? Don't mind if I do! Matinee movies, mid-week happy hours, shopping in empty grocery stores-- these are all the pleasures of the newly unemployed. Many of us also use this time to take a spontaneous vacation. I spent my first few weeks unemployed doing all of these things. Since my boyfriend had just been laid off, we saw a matinee on my very first day (Quantum of Solace). We went to the bar on a Thursday night. We woke up late, walked downtown and ate ice cream for lunch. He went snowboarding in Colorado, I spent a week in Gainesville. Stage 1 is fun.  


Stage 2: Guilt 
You start to feel guilty about all of the fun you've been having, while others are chained to their desks. After sowing your wild, unemployed oats, you decide to get down to business. You read five different résumé tutorials, overhaul your Web site, update your portfolio and send all of it to a recruiter (well, we creatives do, anyway). You become privy to the essential tools of job searching, including e-mail alerts from Monster, CareerBuilder and Indeed. You make yourself sound like a superstar on your LinkedIn profile. Surely, people will be fighting over you. How could they not?  


Stage 3: What Now? 
It's starting to get to you. After applying to 35 jobs you swear you are perfectly qualified for, you wonder if your phone has malfunctioned. And maybe your e-mail is filtering your job offers to the SPAM folder. No such luck. What now? Where is your career going? How long will it be like this? Will you have to (gulp) move back in with your parents? So many haunting questions remain unanswered. Stage 3 is also when you begin to feel burned out from incessantly job searching. The time has come to head back to the bar for Thursday night's happy hour. Although this time, it's totally guilt-free.  

Stage 4: Flip-Flop 
By now, you've completely accepted the way things are. That doesn't stop you from flip-flopping back and forth between hope and despair. One minute, you're applying for a job slightly above your qualifications, because you KNOW you can do it. After (finally) scoring an interview, you are certain you can land this position. This leads you to search for apartments on Craigslist, just to get ahead of the game. You don't want to get the job and be caught off guard, do you? The interview goes well. But as the days pass by and your phone calls and e-mails to the lovely HR rep go unanswered, you realize that once again you have gotten your hopes up. Hello, despair. Don't worry though, hope is just around the corner. Again.  

Stage 5:  
I can only assume that this is when you finally land a job. ::Crosses fingers::