Being unemployed is its own full-time job. There’s never any true relief. You’re always looking for a gig or some unseen opportunity. Meanwhile, there’s no escaping the fact that you have no job. It follows you wherever you go. You can’t even go on the Internet for a nice distraction, because you’ll most likely stumble on some trend piece about how fucked our generation is. The Internet is an overbearing dad wagging his finger in disapproval.
Some of us move back in with our parents. This can light a fire under your ass and make you start hustling to get a job so you can move out ASAP. Or it can make you sink further into complacency and depression. I have friends who moved back in with their parents after college and just never moved out. A temporary move turned into three years. Just like that. I don’t blame them. It’s hard to see the world as a land of opportunity from your parents’ basement.
I didn’t have to move back in with my parents, but that doesn’t mean I was living la vida loca when I was unemployed. In fact, I was having a terrible time because I didn’t feel like I deserved to experience joy. Every time I let my hair down and cut loose, I’d ask myself, “What have I done to earn this good time? NOTHING! Get a job and then you can have fun. Until then, you’re required to be sad.”
Being an unemployed postgrad is a modern-day Choose Your Own Adventure. You can be angry and wallow in a sea of entitlement believing that the world has failed you and it owes you something. But don’t act surprised when you find yourself not getting what you want. After my accident, I struggled with those pangs of resentment, too. I didn’t deserve to get hurt, especially after all I had been through already. When I graduated from college, those familiar feelings resurfaced. I thought, “I’m entitled to a job! I worked hard in school!” But then I realized I sounded like a churlish idiot and shut up and got to work. Getting angry at the world for your problems isn’t going to bring you any closer to a dream job or a relationship or whatever else you feel like you deserve. It’s going to keep you thousands of miles away from it.
A more effective way you can navigate the unemployed postgrad life is to be fearless. Most people who have achieved a modicum of success right after they graduated did it by being brave and laughing at anyone who told them no. In order to get anywhere, you have to ditch vanity and ego and just say to yourself, “I’m going to look like an idiot for the next few years because I have no idea what I’m doing, but that’s okay. That’s the only way I’ll learn.” I’ve noticed that a lot of my peers have paralyzing self-doubt when it comes to going after the things they want, whether it’s a job or a love interest. It makes me think that if you’re single, jobless, or both, it’s probably because you have a hard time believing you deserve otherwise.
I was having drinks recently with a friend and we were gossiping about an acquaintance of ours who had launched a Kickstarter to film a web series. The premise of the show sounded awful, and the video she made to plead her case was cringeworthy.
“She looks so ridiculous,” I snarled. “How could she have done that and thought she looked okay?”
My friend, who is less of a mean gossip girl than I am, said, “You know what? I agree that she looks totally stupid, but I also give her props for putting herself out there. At least she’s doing something. Think about all our friends who are unemployed or working at jobs they hate. They talk about all the things they’d like to do, but do they ever end up doing them? No. And that’s why people who make embarrassing Kickstarters will probably be more successful than the lazy people who have loads of talent. They’re actually doing it, and sometimes that’s all you need for things to happen.”
My friend was right. A week later, the Kickstarter got funded and our acquaintance quit her job to film the web series. I thought about all the people who, like me, had seen the Kickstarter and immediately sent it to their friends to mock her. They were probably bored at their horrible office job and perked up when they saw a chance to make fun of one of their peers. But who gets the last laugh in that situation? The person who is given the opportunity to do what they love or the insecure jerk who’s stuck in a cubicle?
Not giving a fuck about looking stupid is actually the smartest decision you could make, especially when you’re establishing yourself after college and have nothing to lose. The only way you can really escape unemployment hell is by taking some risks. Don’t be frightened. You can do it, babe! Don’t ever forget that Millennials are hustlers. We left school with no clear future and the traditional workplace in pieces, so we had to create our own jobs and build everything from our own intuition. That’s one thing twentysomethings don’t get enough credit for. The narrative is always “Millennials are bums who live with their parents”—which, fine, that contains an element of truth—but we’re also innovative freaks who have a remarkable ability to turn nothing into something.
A year after I graduated from college, I had four internships under my belt and only an Etch A Sketch to show for it. On my twenty-fourth birthday, I was set to start my fifth internship but never ended up going. Instead, I retreated into a writing cave for four months in the hope that something, anything, would happen. When I emerged, I had a full-time job and a ticket to a world even scarier than unemployment: the modern workplace.
Young Unprofessional
Ryan, you cannot survive in the real world. Once people figure out that you don’t know how to do anything, your days are numbered. You will never be able to hold down a job. Everybody gets it but you.
—Me, on the eve of starting my first job (LOL, bye!)
Is it possible to have a legitimate phobia of having a job? I don’t mean like, “Oh my God, I’m too lazy to work. Please let me just lie in bed and listen to sad, fuzzy music forever.” I’m talking about a fear of working that leaves you utterly paralyzed. That’s what I had. After spending my whole life tricking people into thinking I was more functional than I was, I worried that having a job would undo it all. I had gotten my first taste of having my disabilities exposed when I interned at Interview, but the stakes are much lower when you aren’t getting paid. Now that I was actually being compensated, I had to prove that I deserved to be there, which is a hard thing to do when you don’t exactly believe it yourself. After a few days of working, I was convinced my boss would realize I was an impostor with no real skills and fire me.
If my first job hadn’t been so unconventional, perhaps that’s what would’ve happened. When I started my job as a writer and editor at a New York media start-up called Thought Catalog, I was the first salaried employee. We had no office and no staff. I worked from home in my pajamas, masturbated to porn on the clock, and spent my lunch break watching TV and eating leftovers from the fridge. I was shocked that a job like this was possible, even though they’re not so uncommon anymore. My brother, sister, and I have never worked in an office before. Our jobs all revolve around the Internet and give us the option to work remotely. My parents are mystified by what we do for a living. Professions like “blogger,” “porn website creator,” and “online curriculum builder” barely existed ten years ago, let alone when they graduated from college. But if the ideal hope for your children is to have them surpass you in success, my parents are getting their wish fulfilled. My brother sold his website at twenty-eight and went into semiretirement the same year my father did. Things like this are possible now. The Internet has enabled people to achieve success quickly. With the traditional pathways muddled, anyone with a Wi-Fi connection and a great idea can rise to the top. There are no rules. We’re making it up as we go along.
I’m still not exactly sure how I got a job writing about whatever I wanted at the age of twenty-four, but having money probably helped. The most valuable thing my settlement bought me was the time to write and build a portfolio. If you squint hard enough at people in their twenties who have amazing careers, you’ll usually see a trust fund check getting cashed behind them. I don’t like to admit it, especially because I didn’t grow up with money and it often makes me feel like a traitor to my ow
n class, but it’s a fact you can’t ignore. I got my dream job because I didn’t have to take any nightmare ones.
Being shameless also helped me get to where I wanted to be. Right when I entered the world of unemployment, I started e-mailing every writer and editor in town, asking them how they got to where they were. I sent pitches to anyone who would read them. I wrote every single day, which was a luxury of someone who didn’t have to work retail or at a restaurant, and worked on developing my voice until something stuck. Then, after three months of blind panic and working furiously, things began to happen. I started submitting pieces to Thought Catalog and they began to receive lots of traffic. By January—my one-year anniversary from my college graduation—I was given a full-time position.
For the first six months of my being employed, I was so euphoric it felt like I was on drugs. (Sometimes I actually was on drugs, but we’ll get to my Requiem for a Dream moment later.) I wanted to soak everything up and scream nonsense corporate jargon like, “WHERE ARE THE ACTION ITEMS? CAN WE CIRCLE BACK, BOB?” and hand out business cards to everyone I met on the street. Even if it turns out to be dreadful, your first adult job always gives you a perverse thrill. You’re thrust into this foreign environment where you have to learn a whole new way of speaking and behaving. It’s an exciting electric shock to your system.
One of my duties at Thought Catalog involved accompanying my boss to business meetings at bougie artisanal cocktail bars. The person we were getting drinks with would typically be handsome, straight, and young—the type of guy who was groomed for success and had never really spent time being unemployed and freaking out about his future. What was interesting about these business meetings was that nothing would ever get accomplished. You’d spend the first two drinks talking shop and then the cracks would start to appear in the work persona. The timeline of the conversation would typically go like this:
ANATOMY OF AFTER-WORK DRINKS AND NETWORKING
Drink one: You justify why you’re here and drinking a $16 cocktail on the company card. You discuss, in vague terms, the possibility of collaboration. You manage to talk for thirty minutes without actually saying anything at all. This skill of talking a lot without speaking definitively is something you learn pretty quickly. Soon, you’ll be going to meetings that are about having another meeting. It’s very confusing. You may have to lie down in the middle of the conversation and collect yourself.
Drink two: You begin to loosen your necktie and gossip a little bit. “Oh, you know Bob Foreman in accounting? He worked with me at Pelaxaco. Yeah, he’s . . . an interesting guy.” You then measure your professional dicks to see who’s got the biggest one. “You worked at I Am So Blessed Industries for three years? Love that. They offered me a job once but I turned it down to work at I’m More Blessed Industries. That’s great that you took it, though. It’s an amazing starter job.”
Drink three: You make the first mention of having a personal life. You acknowledge, in passing, having a girlfriend or taking a recent vacation to Bermuda. Maybe you talk about where you grew up and make a passing reference to your crazy college days. You’re basically saying, “I am drunk enough to admit that I am a nuanced person whose life means more than just having a job.” You circle back to your mutual acquaintance, Bob Foreman in accounting, and try to extract some shit-talking. “So listen, I love Bob, would die for him, but the man was an idiot when it came to managing a team, wasn’t he?” The discussion of Bob’s flaws happens slowly, and then it hits like an avalanche.
Drink four: Bob is a fucking asshole. Bob is a life ruiner. Bob gave your friend Cindy genital warts. Also, that job of yours that you bragged so much about during the second drink is actually terrible. Your boss is an insufferable demon, and you make no money. To be honest, you shouldn’t collaborate together, because the company won’t pay him anything for it. Everything is terrible, ha ha ha!
Drink five: You’re fucked. You’re ordering a shot. This night is officially turning into a mistake. You’re admitting that you’re cheating on your girlfriend with someone who likes to stick a finger up your ass. “Where are the hookers? Should we call a hooker?” You’re plotting ways in which you can get Bob fired.
Drink six: “I fucking love you, man. You’re fucking awesome. Let’s start our own fucking company together.”
Drink seven: If you’re not dead, you’re calling your coke dealer.
I love watching someone put on a show, only to slowly settle into the person they really are. What fascinates me about the workplace is this unspoken requirement to adopt a new professional personality, even if everyone knows it’s all posturing. You become someone who has never cried over a breakup or thrown up from drinking or failed a class. All the things that make you human are hidden, and you pretend to be someone who always has their shit together. The only place you can really be yourself is happy hour. In college, I thought happy hour was for sad drunk people, but the second I got a job, I was like, “JK; I get it now.” If you’re working a lot, you only have a small window of opportunity to have fun. From 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., you can act like it’s 3:00 a.m. on a Saturday night and no one will question it. Everyone understands that working full-time can turn you into a borderline alcoholic in five seconds. Not only are you constantly under stress, you’re also dealing with insane coworkers all day. Before you had a job, your social life was controlled. Sure, there were crazy people in your classes and sometimes you got stuck talking to a weirdo at a party, but for the most part, you only interacted with people you liked. Jobs are different. Jobs stick a bunch of people with very different personalities in the same room and expect them to learn how to deal with one another. Ordinarily, you’d just be like, “Stop talking to me, you garbage person!” but there’s no escaping them in the workplace. You’re backed into a cubicle and forced to tolerate those who are fundamentally different from you. It can be a torturous experience, but let’s face it: you’re going to spend most of your life surrounded by bugaboos, so the quicker you learn how to coexist with them, the better.
Not all coworkers are bad. In fact, sometimes you’ll like a coworker so much you will want to fuck them six ways from Sunday. Don’t feel guilty about these urges. You’re spending more time with this person than your friends and family, so it’s only natural that you’d start to be like, “Wait—are you hot? Um, who cares; let’s drop this spreadsheet we’ve been working on and go do forbidden things to each other’s bodies.” Still, that doesn’t mean you should act on it. When you fuck a coworker, you’re only fucking yourself, because when things go sour—and they will!—you’ll find yourself in a hell of your own making. The only way I would ever advocate coworker sex is if you’re convinced that this person is your soul mate, and if that’s the case, one of you will have to quit your job in order for the relationship to work. Although it might seem like a major sacrifice, think of it this way: your job isn’t going to clean up your vomit when you’re sick with the flu or give you an orgasm right when you wake up in the morning.
Thought Catalog was my first big-boy job, and it changed my life overnight. I was immediately ushered into the bizarre world of blogging without an instruction manual. Most of the time I felt like I didn’t even work for my boss; I worked for the Internet, which is like the big asshole boss of us all now. The first time I was published online, it was like taking a hit of a powerful drug. The second you post something, you click refresh over and over until you see that someone has left a comment. A wave of adrenaline then washes over you as you keep clicking refresh and watch the responses pile up. The comments run the gamut from “GO KILL YOURSELF” to “This article saved my life!” Then, when the chaos dies down and the chatter begins to dwindle, you come off the high and eventually crash. You start to feel slightly depressed because people have moved on from your article and latched on to something else. At the end of the day, all of the hard work you poured into your piece only ended up amounting to four hours of attention. You think, “What’s the point of it all?” until you s
tart to feel the itch for validation again, and the cycle continues.
As a blogger, you face a lot of unconventional problems, but that doesn’t mean you’re exempt from dealing with typical workplace politics. In every occupation, there’s an unspoken rulebook. You can’t say certain things about certain people for reasons x, y, and z (the reasons, by the way, are usually bogus and vague, but you aren’t allowed to challenge them), and you must be nice to certain powerful figures because they’ve been deemed important. But since bloggers are so physically alienated from one another, the rules can be even more intense. For example, people have huge fights over something as arbitrary as a work acquaintance deciding not to follow you back on Twitter, or a website is angry with another website for taking its advertisers away, or—oops—someone was made fun of on a blog like Gawker by someone they’ve actually met a few times at parties. Bloggers hope that you’ll be too nervous to call them out on their bad behavior in person. They like to pretend the things they do online don’t have any effect on the lives they lead outside of work, but everybody knows that’s not true. In this day and age, the things we do online almost matter more than the things we do offline.
Beyond having to navigate murky relationships with your professional peers, being a blogger also means you have to deal with the insanity of Internet commenters. One thing I learned very quickly at my job is that people are angry. People are upset about a lot of different things and they take it out on the Internet because it’s easy, because it’s expected, because the Internet doesn’t have a face. I’ve never understood commenting culture myself. Before working for Thought Catalog, I had never once left a comment on a blog post. I just didn’t see the point. If I read something I didn’t like on the Internet, I would simply x out of it. I never felt a desire to tell someone I didn’t know how much their thoughts offended me. I could be doing something far more productive like color coordinating my bookshelves on Adderall. Unfortunately, the Internet attracts this miserable breed of human and provides them with a soapbox on which to stand and TYPE VERY LOUDLY AND ANGRILY. They ruin the fun for everybody. Some days I want to wash the Internet and the gross people who populate it off me, but I guess you can feel frustrated about every job. You work all day and even if you love it, it seeps into your bones and you just want to scrub it from your body: the fluorescent lighting, the sad tuna sandwiches in their Tupperware containers, the phony behavior people adopt to make you respect/fear them, the passive aggressiveness, the competitive mood that looms over the office, the incessant gossiping on Gchat, the burdensome task of trying to look busy when you have nothing to do, the issue of not feeling valued by your employers or, perhaps more accurately, the fear that everyone is going to realize that you’ve tricked them and you actually have no idea what the hell you’re doing. If being in college is all about discovering yourself and embracing your specialness, getting your first real job is about realizing that you know absolutely nothing. It’s not a bad thing, though. In fact, it’s a gift! Because only when you discover that you know nothing can you really start to learn something.
I’m Special Page 6