...And never worry about the fall

[autographedcat]

Earlier today in the #frogpants chat room, Malynor (my 19th favourite Canadian), asked how I was doing on my first real day of unemployment, and commented that planned unemployment was probably less stressful.

I said "Well, planned unemployment is slightly less stressful in that it's, well, planned and I have resources set aside to deal with it. But it's still weird for much the same reason skydiving is.

Because of your careful preparations and precautions, you have a strong belief that everything is going to work out fine at the end of the fall, but you still can't quite shake the fear that you just stepped out of a perfectly good aeroplane."

Comments

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

I've been happily unemployed now for 2 years, 4 months and counting. Of course, those retirement checks are nice, but it's only half what I was making working. Still, I manage somehow. My advice: enjoy the small things while you can. Things like: no alarm clock.

[asg-qa-s7.livejournal.com]

Cheer up, Rob. That 'perfectly good aeroplane' will land only as successfully as the nut that holds the wheel.

[tmc4242.livejournal.com]

Much like in skydiving, the allegorical "perfectly good airplane" usually isn't, if it's one you're jumping out of.

( This analysis brought to you by a youth of pumping avgas into jump planes that I wouldn't have flown in WITH a parachute. )

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Heh. I'm having a similar set of thoughts, if it's any comfort. I've never had to go more than about 2 weeks without a firm offer of employment (I'm an ace SQL Server DBA). But although I hate my current job, and having a hard time finding new work while working, I'm really nervous about quitting... and for pretty much the same reason.

[klrmn.livejournal.com]

if you think that's a weird feeling, i did my end-of-year accounting yesterday...and despite being unemployed for 10 out of 12 months of 2012, my net worth has gone down by only $3K. i'm not entirely sure what the universe is trying to tell me. i suspect i'll know better once i find out how much of the taxes i paid on those 2 months of work i get back =).

that being said, being unemployed is boring, and it's much easier to have a manager lining up work for you than have to figure out on your own what open source project X would find useful.

(it should be noted that i've come to the conclusion, after many interviews but no offers, that i need to invest in off-the-job training, which starts monday)

[elynne.livejournal.com]

I saw in your last post that you would be looking for employment or whatever in the Seattle area, and meant to say something like "Hey, let me know when you're up here and we'll do something maybe sometime or something!" and didn't. Consider it said now.

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

Awesome! Current plan has us arriving on January 23rd. That presumes, of course, that we a) leave town on time and b) keep the schedule I've set up. So it might shift a bit, but we definitely expect to be there by the time Conflikt starts. :) And after that, we expect to be in town for the following 40-50 years. At least.

[joecoustic.livejournal.com]

I know that feeling well!! Luckily there is the exhilaration too, but it's not enough (at least for me) to take chances such as these too often! *hugs*