Saturday, May 16, 2009

Unemployment: The Gift and The Curse

I collected my last paycheck from my former employer today. Two weeks worth of work plus about 13 days worth of vacation days paid out. It was a healthy check. Makes up for the guilty feeling I've been having from not working for so long.

For about four and a half years, I worked for a public radio station in Chicago (that pretty much gives it away right there) in various capacities -- producer, reporter, host. When I first started working there, I thought I had the best job in the world (next to being a rock star). Runnin' around the city covering the mayor, the murder trial for the infamous Brown's Chicken Massacre of Palatine, and parts of the fiasco surrounding our now former governor. Well, I should correct myself: by the time the Blagojevich scandal arose, my heart wasn't in the work anymore. The daily grind of working in a local newsroom had gotten to me. I'd come to feel like I was just another blabbering voice in the incessant, 24-hour news culture, overanalyzing political minutiae and spreading a mix of fear and sensationalism. Unfortunately, that's what a lot of the news business has become.

It's time to take a step back. And that includes catching up with friends and family, getting back to my longtime love of music and having cocktail hour in the middle of the day. For about a week I'd been seriously depressed from leaving work, something I had not expected at all, but that's passed. Now that I'm enjoying myself -- staying up late, watching too much TV -- I have a creeping sense of guilt over having all this fun. In about a week, I'll be playing a CD release party for my first EP. I'm really excited about that. And later we'll be going to our friends' wedding, Nissa's brother's graduation and the Yeah Yeah Yeah's. In between all that, loads of food and drinks with the people we love. Good thing we only took a month off. I could get used to this.

No comments:

Post a Comment