Jobless No More

Although I’ve already blabbed about it all over Facebook, I’ve yet to mention it here.

But as of Monday, I will no longer be unemployed. That’s right folks, after roughly 20 days of being out of work, I will be returning to the daily grind. And I couldn’t be happier about it.

Now don’t get me wrong–this little “vacation” of sorts has been fantastic. It gave me time to be Daddy while Ann was at work and I’m thankful for having that opportunity as it was freaking great. But at the last job, my day would start at 5:20 a.m. when my alarm went off, I was on the train by 6:45 a.m. and at work by 7:25 a.m. Approximately 12 hours after the alarm went off, I was back at home. While I was appreciative that my (former) paid for my train pass which afforded me the “privilege” of taking public transportation to my job, between the 8 hours at the office and the commute, the work day was extremely long and really cut into my family time.

But it paid the bills and offered great benefits so I decided to stay there until they A) got rid of me or B) closed our office down. As you now know, Option A came to pass and from the day after I was let go, I got busy submitting applications online and in person. I was relentless, dedicated and focused but filed for unemployment just in case. And despite skipping a local job fair, I persevered and kept on working finding a job–and I eventually got an interview and was offered one.

Many people have been asking me why I went balls-out to find a job so quickly rather than enjoy the time off and collect some checks from the EDD. Well, the simple answer is that I just couldn’t do it. Not only was sitting at home by myself (while The Kid was in school) driving me mad, you have to look at the big picture. There are some people that have been out of work for months if not years and with the job market being what it is, I was lucky to have been called for anything. In fact, it was just the opposite: I was called by quite a few places including Disneyland, which I may still interview for when I have time.

Another reason for wanting to get back to work so soon was because my former employer is paying me 6 weeks of severance pay, the first of which was sent to me last week. I still have 2 more coming my way but I didn’t want to sit around for 6 weeks and watch those checks dwindle down to nothing while I was still seeking work. By the time I get my last severance check, I will already have a steady paycheck coming in from my new job and we should be fine. I figured it was better to get back to work sooner than later, when we would have to start living on ramen noodles and pork rinds.

As far as the new job goes, yes, it’s proofreading once again but it pays significantly less–half the pay of my last job. But it’s something I will take and run with for now until something better comes along, if that even happens. One of the best things, and definitely a deciding factor in all this, is that the new job is a mere 3 miles away. I can get there in about 15 minutes as opposed to 20 minutes to the train station and then another 40 minutes on the train and sooner or later, I’m going to start riding my bike to work. That would be fantastic.

So there you have it. It’s back to work on Monday, and that’s a good thing.