Unemployed in Greenland

For those of you who are somehow impressed by my life's accomplishments, I would like to invite you into my world at the moment.  As I write this sentence, it is 5:46 p.m. on a Tuesday in October.  Three years ago, I would have told you that, at this very moment, I would be wearing a well-tailored suit, ironed shirt and tie, and a newly polished pair of dress shoes, perhaps hunched over the latest issue of The Washington Post Express as I ride along the Metro on my way home after a hard day of work.

Close.  Very close.  I am planted firmly on my ass in the middle of a mattress mounted on a cheap IKEA bedframe, wearing a white tank top and a pair of blue pajama pants hunched over my Macbook while episodes of Lost: Season 1 play on a loop in the background.  Sexy, I know.  But sexy is a luxury I can't afford right now.

Which is ironic, considering where I live.  About a month ago, I moved into a new apartment in the swanky, upscale Friendship Heights neighborhood of Upper Northwest D.C.  For the uninitiated, Friendship Heights sports a Saks Fifth Avenue, a Williams-Sonoma, and a Neiman-Marcus.  Say no more.  I may be in Friendship Heights, but I am definitely not of it.  My humble abode sits atop a row of brick townhouses.  It's nice and quaint, but it doesn't have the turbo-charged luxuries of some of the other places around here.  For example: there is no natural sunlight in the living room.  Well, there is a skylight that illuminates about a third of the room, giving it the ambience of a solitary confinement cell in a 19th-century French penitentiary. 

This is not to say that I don't like the apartment.  I actually love it.  But it also highlights the fundamental problem with my life right now.  You see, a few days ago, I lost my job.  Which is actually impressive, because it implies that I had a job.  It was a temporary job with a residential real estate company involved in long and protracted litigation.  I signed on, ostensibly through January, as an independent contract attorney.  Sounds glamorous, I know.  Over the course of three weeks, I was sent thrice to Atlanta, Georgia and environs to review files.  Mountains and mountains of files.  The job specifically required a J.D., but I am inclined to believe that the necessary skill level was that of a lobotomized orangutang.  But I got to wore that suit I talked about, walk briskly through the airport glancing at my watch to convey busyness, stand in light at rental car counters, and basically feel more important.  Plus, I got paid.  Not much, but enough.  And that's all a guy can ask for right now.

Until it isn't.  I got laid off on Saturday, hours before a 25th birthday party.  Celebrate good times.  Turns out that my job isn't necessary anymore, so I got the proverbial pink slip.  So now, instead of playing moderately affluent adult with a shirt-and-tie, I am back to Square One, playing the moonlighting blogger with a degree, debt, and a dearth of time on my hands.  That is why I am at home on a Tuesday wearing a tank-top and PJ's while a block away The Real Housewives of Montgomery County spend their husbands' green at Bloomingdale's.

Such is life.  Unemployed in Greenland.

A person of a darker disposition might be deterred or daunted, or delve into the depths of deriving depressing drivel from D words like it were D-Day.  Dude.  I won't make you read a sentence like that ever again.  But I digress (*grimace*).  Things aren't so bad.  I don't have to deal with the exhausting burdens of business travel every week, and maybe I can spend a little more time on things I find enjoyable but haven't had the time to.

Like reading books.

Or watching Lost for the billionth time.

Or looking for another job (eh).

Or blogging.

Unemployed in Greenland.  Thumbs-a-twiddle.