It Simply Is

This unemployed state of being leaves me frustrated and impatient. Going through the day (day three counting the weekend) at home, with no clear goal or task to accomplish, leaves me feeling, well, sick to some degree. The feeling must be what a caged predator feels like to a large extent. Fresh into captivity, prowling around the perimeter of its small cage, snarling, and licking its chops. It searches, intently, for an escape and slams its head against the walls of the cage to test the strength of what contains it. That is where I'm at. Fed, watered, sheltered, let out to exercise periodically, but the feeling of being caged and held against my will is over whelming and has boiled over.


We have been here before. About a year ago, work dried up in similar fashion and I found myself in a holding pattern on the prowl. This time i don't feel near the financial stress--though that is nagging--but more the absence of clear work and focus. Without a job to go to my mind takes in all the little tasks that could/should be done and spins out of control. I made a "to do" list, on Sunday, but so far I've just starred at it and nothing has been crossed out. It is sad, borderline pathetic, when changing the dead light bulbs gives me a lift of accomplishment. It isn't just on me this sense of impatience and falls, my family feels it all to sharply as well.


While I am not the model for paternal patience, i do enjoy doing small tasks with my older son. We can do small carpentry projects together or things around the house, or whatever may come up. And, when I'm working and have had the chance to channel energy, focus, and creativity into my work away from home i am refreshed, to a large degree, and the questions of a 5 1/2 yr. old are fun and inquisitive. Sadly, while I'm out of work, i find that i don't have the patience for endless questions and i crave and seek out the solitude of work, chances to be engrossed and consumed by the task at hand. The sense of burying myself in work is refreshing and recharging. As a father and husband, a man, a great deal of my identity is tied up in my job. When i am unemployed a portion of who i am is left fallow and becomes the predator desperate to escape.

A good friend of mine and i were talking the other day, kicking around my situation, and he believes that working hard, as husbands and fathers, to provide for our families is a biblical mandate--well maybe. It is necessary and generally unavoidable. And we do it because we want better lives for our families.

Being unemployed is no picnic, its not a vacation, or relaxing break at home. Unemployment insurance doesn't cover the bills and the prevailing notion that the ranks of the unemployed are so because of laziness and ignorance can/should be dropped. It maybe true that many milk the system and they truly are a drag on the economy and society at large. But the majority of the unemployed are so as a consequence of the economy, not their work ethic or personality.

It isn't our fault.

It isn't anyone's fault.

It simply is.

So, what now? I don't know but I'll try to begin figuring it out today.