King St. Industries: The Unemployment Guide to Survival: The Best of a Shitty Situation Part 1

I want to come out and say that being unemployed is hard work. Its depressing, frustrating, and defeating. Day in and day out knowing that your locked in competition for the few jobs available in the area each candidate pushing for the extra edge over the other, potential employers flooded with resumes and cover letters and always, always, always wondering what the next day will bring. That is hardest part, for me, the uncertainty of the next day, the empty schedule, the loose ends that seem to be floating around my vision. I strive for normalcy, go to parties, host people at our house, engage with the world around me as though my life were perfectly normal but its not. I'm unemployed. Week in and week out it is a struggle to meet the financial commitments we have, every day is a test in patience and perseverance. Yet, we survive.

A lot of what I've written lately has focused on how hard and dark this time is and that is true. I flutter in and out of dark depressions and paralyzing fear. The numbing sense that my world is crumbling and the stark realization at how temporary the creature comforts we acquired can be. But we, as a family, survive. Some how, some way, we get up with the new day and go forward, albeit a little blindly, and trust that the steps taken are the steps to take. And over the past few days, or weeks--however long its been since I last wrote here--I've come to realize that there are a few key elements to surviving unemployment that I can share and there will be more as I identify them. Incidentally, this will give my blog some structure, as I am starting this on a Wednesday I think I'll post a new element to my Unemployment survival every Wednesday. It will be known as the Survivor's Guide to Unemployment: The Best of a Shitty Situation.

The Best of a Shitty Situation #1: Exercise.

(My New Covert)

It is challenging to identify the reasons I've made it since February, unemployed, with out loosing my mind. The coping mechanisms are not always black and white and one may be contingent on the other. But I intend to do my best to share what I've found to work. The first thing is to exercise.

Besides sex, for men, I can't think of anything that helps maintain confidence and energy and self belief and a reason to go forward like identifying a highly physical outlet that allows for pure release and exercise. I look to mt biking, I am fortunate to have Galbraith Mt. less than 10 minutes from my doorstep (preliminary info here: http://www.ridegalbraith.com/). Mt. biking has been, far and away, one of the most (besides the support of my brave wife) crucial elements to my survival thus far. Frequency has ebbed and flowed, one of the draw backs of riding often is breaking equipment or getting injured, both of which have put stops in my riding, and of course recovery from the ol' vasectomy put a damper in my ride time as well. But around those little draw backs, I have relied heavily on Galbraith and my bike as a way to break up my day, get some exercise, and have an outlet that was purely mine. In a sense it has filled some of the gaps that work filled prior to my unemployment situation.

I identify heavily with work, as a carpenter, a great deal of who I am is wrapped up in what I do, the detailed finish work, the aggressive, fast framing, the long days and even a bit of the tedium of repetitious carpentry created an identity that I could live with. I may not love being a carpenter, I may have very strong feelings about moving forward with my life to do other, powerful, and meaningful things. Yet, working as a craftsman has been, for the last 5 years, a chief identifier in my life and a somewhat creative and often physical outlet on a daily basis. To be perfectly honest, I did not realize how important and crucial that outlet was to my psyche. I am not a homebody and being home for large swaths of time gives me anxiety and a restless depression that is hard to break out of. Mt. biking has been a more than suitable replacement for work. If only I could get paid to ride... I will most likely never be a professional rider but I will always enjoy it.