Why You Hate Yourself
Being unemployed, your days and nights will take on whole new dimensions, many of which may not be too beneficial.
If you have habits (good or bad), chances are, they will be magnified. One example is smoking (this represents one of your “crazy” friends). If you are a smoker, you will smoke more. Really a big revelation, right? Well, maybe not, but you need to realize you’re not smoking more just because you have more free time to do so.
You’re probably smoking more because while you do have more free time, it’s also because (even though smoking constricts all those little blood vessels that are also clogged with pork rinds and all that goo from Taco Bell), the act of smoking brings an emotional calmness down upon us like nothing else. It’s a fact, smokers smoke more when they are under stress. In its own mysterious and charming way, smoking is soothing, calming, and refreshing. Where you’re going to get the $10.00 a day for these things, I don’t know, but going against all medical advice, I do not advise you to quit right now. Too many changes all at once never works out.
The truth is you will smoke more because it gives you something to do. I admit, sitting on your couch (until Gary’s truck pulls up and whisks it away) and watching Ziva pistol whip one of the bad guys into submission, is mesmerizing and somehow sexually stimulating, but it’s getting on to noon, and you really haven’t done anything else all day. Go have a smoke.
Face it, you are not used to sitting around doing nothing. At least smoking gives you something to do besides aimlessly wandering around the house. You have to get up off your lazy, unemployed, no-account, fat ass and go outside and light up (outside, because nobody is allowed to smoke inside anymore. God, how I sometimes hate the 21st century.).
The signal your brain is really sending that prompts you to smoke another is, “Hey, shouldn’t you be working on the Digby Account? What the hell are you doing sitting down? Get off your lazy ass and do some work!”
Well, you still ain’t got no work to do. But you feel anxious all of the time, and your brain is asking you to physically move around a bit. Smoking gives you something to do with your spare time. So, you get up and go outside and light up. Time after time after time after time.
Same thing with drinking. Yes, it dulls the pain, and yes, it’s fun. But most importantly, it fills up those empty hours that used to be productive for you. You get up and go to the kitchen. Find a glass in the cupboard and fill it with ice. Pour in the whiskey, and go back to whatever inactive thing you were doing. Sip it. Focus on it. Savor it. Taste it. It’s the same thing you were supposed to do with that expensive chocolate or imported cheese but can’t afford. Before you know it, 10 minutes have passed. Rinse and repeat. It’s now two o’clock in the afternoon, and my, time sure does fly, doesn’t it?
The sad reality is that it’s not the emptiness of the days, or weeks, or even months that affect you while you remain jobless. It’s the minutes and the hours that pass by oh so slowly. Every minute, every hour, of every day will often pass by slowly and agonizingly. Those minutes and hours need to be filled with something. So more drinking. More smoking. More eating.
Ahh, yes, eating. Let’s not forget the eating. Again, it’s really odd that there is almost a direct, inverse relationship between having money and eating and having no money and eating.
When you were employed and came home after a long day as a productive member of society, many times you dragged your sorry ass in the door and threw something down your throat that was dinner like, then grabbed the remote and planted your tired ass down on the couch and watched Monday Night Football.
Now that you have no job, are seeing your finances dwindle away, and the simple fact that you did nothing productive between nine and five today, you seem to concentrate a bit more about what and when you eat.
There’s a whole lot of psychological mumbo jumbo mixed up in all of this, but don’t discount it. Eating a lot has the same tranquilizing effect that smoking and drinking has. It soothes us. It calms us. It fills up those unproductive minutes and hours for us. Up to a point.
These days you are not as physically active as you once were. Your physical activity has dwindled down to, well, nothing. It has been replaced by worry and doubt and all those other “bad humors.” But you’re anxious. So to take the edge off, you eat. Then as you pass by the living room mirror on your way back to the TV, you catch a reflection of yourself. Your fat self. Your disgusting, unshaven, Jimi Hendrix Purple Haze T-shirt wearing, fat pig of a self. And do you know what you do?
You eat that big ass sandwich anyway. And the chips. And then find a piece of that leftover pie hiding behind the milk. And you eat that too.
Why? Because, “Ijustdontgiveashitanymore.” And you cry. You cry because you know you are turning into someone even you can’t stand.
My Advice? Stay tuned. We will try and figure this out together.
RealAdviceForTheUnemployed