GUEST POST: Unemployed Year-In-Review

EDITOR'S NOTE: Another guest post, from another friend of U.F. that has been out of work, this time for exactly a year yesterday. Please take a second to comment if you dig it. Thanks.

Today was a bad day. For a lot of reasons, actually.

Mainly, it was a day I had been dreading for a week or so now. Sept. 3, 2009 is the one-year anniversary of what has become, in retrospect, the worst day of my life.

Only 365 days and about 12 hours ago, my cell phone rang at what I'll guess was 8:30 a.m. This was odd for a number of reasons, the foremost being that sportswriters, as a general rule, don't like to be awake before noon. I'd been called at 11 a.m. before, and I was fine with that. Reasonable people, I assume, will have been up for at least three hours by this point. But 8-freaking-30? This is the civilian equivalent of being called at 4 a.m., I think.

On the other end of the call was the editor for the smaller paper that technically employed me, even if I did split my time more or less down the middle between it and its much-larger affiliate newspaper. There was something odd about his tone of voice, but given my inexperience with the time of day, I figured I just didn't know what people sound like before The Price is Right ends.

"(My name), it's (his name).. uhhh," he started, "There's something going on. I need you to come into the office as soon as possible."

My first thought was that "as soon as possible" could only refer to a time that was much closer to lunchtime (I promise that I will soon stop making references to how early this call came, but I cannot impress upon you enough that it was very jarring). I grudgingly drove to the office without showering and it only dawned on me that this might be The Day as I was about halfway there. That made the back end of the ride seem like forever, you understand.

When I arrived at the office, the editor that called me was nowhere to be found, so I dicked around on the internet for close to an hour before the paper's EIC poked his head in the sports office and said with a sigh, "Oh, (editor) hasn't talked to you?" My life didn't flash before my eyes as I followed him into his office, and I didn't feel my whole body tighten when I saw that a second person, another higher-up within the editorial department, waiting in the office.

I don't recall what was said in that office, except that I just muttered "Yup" a lot throughout the five minutes or so it took them to explain that I was out on my ass and then make me sign some papers to this effect (what indignity!). I don't remember much else except that, like everyone else that's been laid off the past two years or whatever, "it has nothing to do with performance." In my case, I knew that much was true since I'd been nominated for and won a number of New England Press Association awards (and indeed some more came in after I got laid off, and I heard through the grapevine that this was much to the embarrassment of the editor who called me that morning/decided I'd get the axe, which was a bright spot this year for sure). These awards, however, offered no consolation.

Neither did the woman to whom I was whisked, whose company the newspaper had hired just for this occasion (and probably cost about half my annual salary for a day's work). She was, I'd guess, in her late 60s or early 70s, and seemed nice enough as she explained that everyone I knew would understand my plight and that it was okay for me to be angry. I remember exactly what I said to her, with what I think was disaffected nonchalance: "I want to punch you in the fucking face right now." To her infinite credit, she took it in stride. I imagine she got that response a lot.

I made a number of calls on the ride home, to my girlfriend at the time, to my parents, to my now-ex-coworkers. None of them had much to say to me other than, "Oh, that blows."

I kind of can't believe it's been a year since that sunny, doom-filled morning. I don't feel like a different person now, or anything like that. I just feel as empty as the days that have rolled past with an irritating lack of speed under a microscope, while the weeks and months have positively flown by. I got sick of playing XBOX every day at least nine months ago, and yet here I am. I've sent out literally hundreds of resumes and heard back on a percentage that's right below the Mendoza Line. Actual interviews? One in 20. Maybe. As it happens, people that hire other people are assholes.

But as I reached this first birthday of the shitty part of my post-college life, something that was too cruel to be coincidence happened: for the first time since college, my checking account is below $100. My "generous" severance checks stopped arriving at my house just two weeks after I stopped arriving at work. My unemployment payments ran out four months ago. My various part-time jobs as a hockey writer have, understandably, not paid very well in the hot summer months. In stark contrast to the ice on which hockey is played, it was my liquidity that started melting away come June.

I don't know for sure when I'll get my next paycheck from anyone. I don't know what I'll do for food and gas when that $100 dwindles to $0 sometime next week. I don't know anything. Except that this has been the worst year of my life in a goddamn runaway. And also that, while I thought writing this would be cathartic, it has, instead, just made me feel worse.

Blah.