At some point in your life, I whole-heartedly recommend being jobless.
I’m 100 percent sober and about 30 percent serious. Hardly a glowing endorsement, but there are plenty of upsides. When I get out of my fretful head, I’m a kid on summer vacation, taking myself to ball games, amusement parks, free concerts and museums. We’re blessed with too many cheap-to-free things to do, some are just at 3 p.m. on a Tuesday.
Still we complain summer’s gone in a blink, faster and faster ’till we all fall down. Time doesn’t accelerate as much as we accelerate it – nothing to do with child vs. adult – everything to do with that quintessential American belief that hustling is a virtue. “Work hard, play hard,” one of those cultural artifacts that alien archaeologists will dust off, next to the fossilized remains of multi-tasking as effective workflow.
“Nobody on their deathbed has ever said, ‘I wish I had spent more time at the office,'” said the Rabbi Harold Kushner.
Slowing down, regrouping, rethinking “what I want to be when I grow up,” these are a few of my favorite things. Something else unemployment does is test you. I’m the comeback kid and knowing how well I handle adversity is good information. Call it a bounce-back-ability rating – more important even than knowing your credit score.
Draketaketwo 