Dispatches from the Permanent Vacation

This whole being unemployed thing is just plain weird. I realize that I'm only one of millions of people who are out of work right now, as I can see for myself judging from the volume of people taking up tables at Borders right now, at 3:00 in the afternoon on a Tuesday. When I wrote my book here, back in the spring of 2005, I could show up at 9 in the morning and be the only person here. Now it's downright crowded. Sometimes I can't even get a table with an outlet. But I did today, which is a good thing, because even though I am not making any real second-novel progress since Sunday, I can at least waste time on Facebook and AOL and the NYS Department of Labor website.

So, hineni: here I am. Jittery, uninspired, anxious, under-exercised, pretty much broke, full of dread, and just as busy as I was when I had a job. I'm always at temple on Monday nights for meetings, on Friday nights for Shabbat services, on Saturday mornings for Torah study. On Wednesday nights, I'm in my Year 2 class for the Melton adult Jewish learning program, which, thank G-d, gave me a scholarship to continue my studies. I'm more grateful than anyone can ever know, because seriously, this is the highlight of my week at the moment. I'm trying to stay busy, call on friends, make plans. But what I'm most aware of is how quiet my life has become. Most days I go hours without talking to anyone. It's not like I have no one to talk to, but most of my communication is by email these days. When the phone rings (with apologies to anyone who has called me recently) I can't bear to pick it up. Lately I just don't have the energy to tell people the lie that I'm doing fine. I'm scared and I'm worried from the second I wake up in the morning until the sleeping pill kicks in.

(There happens to be a really cute guy one table over at Borders, which is not a bad thing. But talk to him? Yeah right. Hi, I'm a garden-variety 39 year old writer wannabe with no job. And he's probably unemployed too. Fabulous. Oh, and he just left. Probably because I exude unhappiness and stress like a subway car at rush hour.)

Most of my friends, rightfully, tell me over and over again that my last job, nice as it was, wasn't really what I need to be doing with my life. That it was just a nice little marketing job with no real potential and lots of annoyances. And they are right: it certainly did not feed my soul or fulfill my ambitions in any way. But it was a safe haven, somewhere to go, where I had a routine. Where I knew what the day would generally bring, where I could predict what a client would or wouldn't like, where I knew the guy in the deli and he knew how I took my coffee, and where I had a method to getting through the day. And sure, some days were a lot worse than others, but that's with any job. It wasn't a bad job. I've had bad jobs. I know the difference.

And now that Im trying to write about what it was like to have a bad job, I find myself lost for words, unable to get anything down on paper except a whole lot of throat clearing and basically meaningless delays. I don't seem to be able to access the emotional heart or language of the story. And I don't know why. It's not like I don't have time. It's not like I don't have access to good, cheap hazelnut latte every day between 3 and 5 (Borders coffee happy hour! Maybe that's why it's so damn crowded?) I sit down to write and, well, nothing happens.

Last time this happened to me, where I suddenly found myself without a job, I was able to both complete a book and find a new job within ten weeks. It doesn't look like that's going to happen this time. There are just so many good people out of work. And very, very little to apply for.

And of course this is complicated by the fact that I'm not sure if I really want to go back to work as a marketing director. If only there were some way to translate this writing thing into, well, writing for a living. I'm not without total hope. I mean, I do have a book coming out next summer.

But calling myself a writer, right now, feels more like a fancy way of saying that I'm a 39 year old jobless person who has had to move back home because it's just not possible to get by on $405 a week in Larchmont, NY. And without the ability to focus on a new book, I can't really call myself a writer anyway. After the past few days of nothing but beating myself up about the poor quality of the six pages I've managed to accomplish, I can totally understand why Fitzgerald and Hemingway drank. Maybe I should start.