I’ve been fairly pro­duc­tive in my funem­ploy­ment. I get up with V, as I said I would, and he is always like, “why don’t you lounge? Why don’t you sleep in?” And I’m like, “no, that’s a waste of a day, a waste of pro­duc­tive time.” Sun­day, while he was out all day with a friend vis­it­ing from out of town, I walked from our apart­ment in NOPA through GGP down to the ocean. By the time I got there, it was start­ing to get chilly, and I noticed that my shoes were start­ing to fall apart, lit­er­ally, so I got on the 5, and came home.

Mon­day, I got up early, and did my laun­dry. There’s a cute laun­dro­mat just across the street, and it opens at 7 a.m. I was the only one there the whole time I was wash­ing and dry­ing. It was very nice. I can’t really remem­ber what else I did yes­ter­day. I mean, I was home, I had Trader Joe’s chicken buree­tas for lunch, what else? OMG, I’m so fuck­ing bored.

This morn­ing, Tues­day, one week later, I was clean­ing the bath­room. It’s fab now, thank you very much. And that’s it. Oh, I vac­u­umed out my Mac. It’s been run­ning really hot lately, in the 50s C. And when I’m raid­ing, heh heh, it pops up into the 70s C. Not good. So I vac­u­umed out the vents, and it’s already cooler. It’s a known issue that Apple refuses to acknowl­edge offi­cially, so we do what we can to make it work. Whatev.

Every time I clean the toi­let, no mat­ter where I am (like, even one time when I puked at work, and was clean­ing up the rim, I thought of this), I think of Cher. Yes, that Cher. I love her to pieces, you know I do, but she’s the first per­son to come to mind when I clean the toi­let. I had a dream a long time ago that I was wash­ing pots and pans, and my mother said to me that every­thing should be clean, clean enough for Cher to eat off of. Cher was in the dream next to my mother, and she was nod­ding her head in approval of what my mother was say­ing. So, from that day on, I think of Cher when I clean the toi­let. Not when I clean pots and pans, how­ever. Our sub­con­scious is a mys­te­ri­ous and fucked up place.

And now that my realm is up from weekly ser­vice, I must go romp through the for­est some more.

That’s all.

1. “Don’t Be Light (The Hacker Remix)” — Air — Every­body Hertz
2. “Sing Me Span­ish Techno” — The New Pornog­ra­phers — Twin Cin­ema
3. “Will He Like Me” — Barbra Streisand
4. “Funky Big Band” — Janet Jack­son — Janet
5. “Ice Cream” — Sarah McLach­lan — Fum­bling Towards Ecstasy
6. “Headstrong” — 10,000 Mani­acs — Blind Man’s Zoo
7. “Brazil” — Pink Mar­tini — Sym­pa­thique
8. “Je m’ennuie” — Mylene Farmer — Point de suture
9. “Only the Wind” — Pet Shop Boys — Behav­ior
10. “I’m Not Call­ing You a Liar” — Florence and the Machine — Lungs

Today is Day 4 of Funem­ploy­ment 2010. I count Tues­day as the offi­cial Day 1. I’m already a lit­tle bored. I’ve got five toons to level to 80, and cook­books to work my way through, and I’m just all meh about it. In fact, it feels like a vaca­tion. What I said about hav­ing a pur­pose really means some­thing. This job, as much as I strongly despised it, was a pur­pose. I went there every day, did what they asked of me, took home a pay­check, and enjoyed my free time. Now all I have is free time, and I feel like 90 per­cent of my time is under­uti­lized. But then again, it’s only Day 4, and I have to get myself into a routine.

I’m not sleep­ing in. I get up with V, and I stay up after he leaves. I’m man­ag­ing to keep the apart­ment clean and tidy, although the bath­room needs work. Who wants to clean a bath­room, job or not? I’ve got loads of boxes left to sort through, and that rot­ten stor­age to empty out. Ugh. There is plenty to do in the next cou­ple of months. I just have to get past this ini­tial bit of depres­sion, and I’ll be fine. This is what I wanted, remember?

We’re going to see Chelsea Han­dler at the Masonic Cen­ter tonight. That will be a lot of fun. I could use a good laugh. I promise I’m not going to get all mor­bidly depressed and cry in my cereal. It’s not worth it, and I am happy to be out of a sit­u­a­tion I didn’t want in the first place. I know the con­cep­tion about being unem­ployed, and espe­cially “in this econ­omy,” since there are so many oth­ers who are in the same boat and worse, it shouldn’t be such a stigma, but it feels like it still is a stigma to be unem­ployed. At least I can pay my own way. I don’t need to rely on the kind­ness of strangers. I’m sure I’ll get over it.

I woke up this morn­ing, and Vinny was gone (he was in the shower), and I thought, shit, he left with­out me. But then, he would have left with­out me because I was laid off on Mon­day, and I don’t have to go to work any­more. The Secret works.

I called in sick on Mon­day; I had a migraine that would kill an ox; not the first time. The headaches have been more fre­quent in the last cou­ple of months, and I haven’t fig­ured out why, although I’m think­ing they were because of my job. I checked my e-mail, and was going to send an e-mail to every­one telling them that I was out sick that day. Instead, I found a mes­sage announc­ing a manda­tory com­pany meet­ing at 9:30 a.m. Oh, wow. The last time we had one of those, they announced lay­offs. So I sent a mes­sage to K and J and asked them to let me know what was going on. Then I went back to bed.

A cou­ple hours later, I woke up and checked my work e-mail. No responses. Then I noticed that my e-mail was frozen because my inbox was full, and now that I think about it, it was a weird coin­ci­dence that my e-mail inbox was full and blocked the day that I was laid off, or was it a coin­ci­dence? So I sent a cou­ple e-mails from my gmail account, and I got replies really fast. One of them said that there were indeed reduc­tions: 270 peo­ple, 40% of the staff. Whoa. That’s mas­sive. Then I called the VP, and the first thing he said was, you were part of the reduc­tion, and you need to call HR. I don’t think I’ve ever dis­missed a VP before, and cer­tainly not as fast as I did him. He was all like, sorry, not a reflec­tion on you, I wish you the best, yadda yadda, and I’m like, save it, get me out of here. I was lit­er­ally wav­ing my hand at thin air in my room like he was stand­ing in front of me and I was shoo­ing him away. I wanted to find out what I had to do next, not hear some­thing insin­cere and canned. I’m so turn­ing into my mother.

I went in to work yes­ter­day to sign the papers and find out what the whole pack­age was about. It was the first and last time I’d ever been to Bldg. 249. It was my last day at work. The pack­age is nice. I’m on paid admin­is­tra­tive leave and on full pay­roll and ben­e­fits until May, at which time I will become unem­ployed. Later this sum­mer I’ll receive a sev­er­ance check, my stocks will vest, and I’ll have a tight lit­tle sum of money to stash away. And there’s always unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits, too. I should be able to max out the ben­e­fit. And if I do it right, I should be fine for a while.

Seri­ously, this is weird. I haven’t been unem­ployed since 2003, and even then it was only a cou­ple of months. I always have a job. I’m always work­ing. I haven’t been laid off since 1995. I always leave on my own, I never wait to be laid off or fired. But this time, even though I knew my job sucked, quit­ting with noth­ing else in my favor would have sucked worse. I wouldn’t have the pay­checks or the sev­er­ance or the unem­ploy­ment. I made a choice to stay in a shit job until the com­pany decided what to do with me. I decided to let them make the move. I was patient, and I was going stir crazy.

I have to find some­thing cre­ative to do with my time. I have to find a pur­pose again. And that’s great. For so long, I’ve been stuck in a job I hated and which didn’t even need me, and now I’m free. I think it’s time to move on from biotech and do some­thing more inter­est­ing, more fun. What, I have no idea, but we’ll find out. I’ve got plenty of time.

So, next up, $32 mil­lion. Nice round num­ber. And why not? What do you say, Universe?