The value of unemployment

On Monday I started a new and exciting job that I think is going to take me in the direction I want to go. I've finally gotten real work in international development where I can learn and grow in a field that I think will be rewarding and interesting. But getting to this point was not an easy affair. I spent the past two and half months unemployed after I left my last job at an NGO called One Acre Fund. While unemployment was in many ways a struggle, it was also a time to learn about myself and my city. 

In my last job I had been at best a glorified intern so I knew this was coming. I originally had a three month contract, then a two month extension, then a one month extension, then in mid-December there was no more extending and I stopped making my commute from the Q102 bus to the N train to the Z train that led me from Astoria, Queens to the heart of the Financial District. When you're so used to having a routine, waking up one day and not having any real pressing responsibilities is a bit of a shock. Because then finally there was no one but myself to tell me why my day matters.

Unemployment enables a lot of nice (but cold) daytime strolls through Central Park

I became my only supervisor and my only task was to acquire a new job. For weeks I sat at the folding table in my poorly heated kitchen. I could see the light come in around the edges of the back door because the foundation of the apartment building is sinking. I sat there staring at my laptop more than anything, while I looked for jobs online, emailed alumni, edited my resume countless times and became all too familiar with what is now my least favorite genre of writing, the cover letter. 

I don't like writing praises about myself so cover letters have never flowed naturally from my fingertips. I'd much rather write about rodeos, gun shows, libraries, Nigerian restaurants or Bolivian llama sheds. My self-deprecating humor and inability to exaggerate in a valuable way about myself (although I never seem to have a problem exaggerating frivolous stories about my childhood) made writing cover letters an arduous challenge to sell myself and generate excitement about each possible job even when I knew there was only a fraction of a chance I'd even get an interview. Every time I started a cover letter I just wanted to write

"I promise I'm smart. I promise I'll work hard. You can trust me, I'm an Eagle Scout."

But I was pretty sure that wouldn't get me that far. So I carried on writing, editing, checking jobs websites religiously and just kept applying because it was the only thing I could do. 

I considered a wide variety of opportunities

However, one can only write cover letters for so long every day. My general goal was to apply for at least five jobs a week but that still left me with a good deal of time on my hands. So after I put in a bunch of hours cleaning my apartment, convincing my girlfriend that a shoe organizer was necessary to bring order to our life, and loading up on groceries at Costco, I was left wondering how to spend my time. 

The first order of business was seeing as many museums as possible. While not free, a number of museums in New York are a "suggested donation" for entry, which is often a price of $15-22. However, if one lacks any semblance of shame and is very light on money, you can always just give a dollar, or sometimes even change.

So I went to the Cloisters, a beautiful reconstructed monastery maintained by the Met up in Washington Heights along the Hudson River; the Frick Collection, a beautiful home filled with great old masters and impressionist paintings that were the spoils of Charles Frick's steel empire; MoMA PS1, where I went twice so I could go on the free tour; El Museo del Barrio; Sculpture Center; the Studio Museum in Harlem; the Grey Gallery at NYU; the Queens Museum; the Brooklyn Museum; the Museum of the City of New York; the Bronx Museum; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which I also went twice in one day because I went to the Museum Highlights tour in the morning and then wanted to return for the Contemporary art tour in the afternoon, all for the price of one dollar. 

Georgia O'Keefe's painting of the Brooklyn Bridge was one of my favorite finds

I museum-hopped, I cooked nice dinners for my girlfriend, I did all of our laundry and even washed the sheets on a semi-regular basis. I cleaned and bought groceries and wondered if this was how 1950s housewives felt. I lay in bed reading Junot Diaz all day and remembered why I loved reading so much before college turned it into a chore. I sat in my small bedroom and listened to old records of poets reciting their works over the hum the air conditioner continuing its vain war against the always-too-hot radiator. Most of all I thought. I spent time by myself and got to consider what I wanted out of my future. I wasn't jumping from one job to another. I wasn't locked into a career track. I had time to remember me, to remember the things that make me smile and to learn that I like reading on the subway so much that I should probably ride it regularly This was the first time, maybe since the summer after my first year of college, that I had time to myself - away from jobs and school and expectations. Even with the specter of my job search hanging over my head, I took the time to make myself good coffee and to cook a lot of butternut squash because those were things that made me happy. 

I especially appreciated coffee shops that feature cat puns

While it was a struggle to continue to churn out those cover letters, writing so much about myself gave me time to consider who I wanted to say I was. Writing "what I wanted to do with my life" so many times, like a mantra of self-assertion, eventually generated some actual introspection. After going to the final round interview for four different jobs in international development and not getting an offer I began to question if I had chosen the right path for myself. But in the end, after walking for hours through Central Park and calling my grandparents as much as I should have been all along, I knew that the path of least resistance was not the road I wanted to be on. Now, after a season of art museums, an opportunity presents itself and I must rise to the challenge.