...which I hope will cheer you up and inspire you.

If you surfed in on some search term like "how can I survive unemployment" "unemployed depressed" or "unemployment sucks," I just want to tell you a little bit more of my story. Maybe it will help you feel better.

The moral of my story is that you don't need a job. You never needed a job. The job provided two things in your life:

1) money
and
2) a sense of purpose because you had something to accomplish every day

It's those two things you need, not the job. Now, if you have a job that you like and that gives you enough of both 1) and 2), keep it. If it doesn't provide those things, then screw it. Do everything you can to get laid off with a kick-ass severance package. ;)

If you're new here, let me just fill you in on the story so far:

Dude has skills. Dude has experience. Dude makes some political miscalculations and gets excommunicated from corporate America. Dude finds himself jobless. Dude takes crappy job just because he needs something. Dude gets himself fired from crappy job by taking the rare opportunity to mouth off directly to a billionaire. (Dude intentionally sabotages himself?) Dude flails around for a while, being too stupid to seize various opportunities. Dude gets another slightly less crappy job and loses it through no fault of his own.

That's where we are in my story up to this point.

But my story gets better.

Dude links up with people who need what he has. Everything starts falling into place for dude when dude finds proper direction for his energy. Money? Dude doesn't really think about it anymore. He has neither need nor inclination to waste his energy on that.

Three things have crystallized for me lately:

1. Money is not success. It is only a fringe benefit of success.
2. A job does not imbue life with meaning. What you do in your job matters.
3. God doesn't help those who help themselves, She helps those who help others.

Make this moment count, unemployed person. Survive and thrive.

Peace and success.