Job Hunting is a Full Time Job

The only difference is I don't get paid and there's no benefits. Every day, I wake up early to take my wife to the train station, which she uses to travel to her work. She's our only source of income, and I feel like a bum. I return from this three mile trip each day and make the morning pot of coffee. The adjacent dining room has the limited light of dawn for a February morning, and I sit there in silence knowing full well this cup of coffee will be the best thing about my day until my wife is back from work. I take it with a little milk, no sugar. I even drink it slowly. I pretend that my mind has the impression of an eventual uprising out of the impending dreaded reality. But I know it is futile, and as this thought vanishes, the unassuming grayness of the room is replaced by jagged sun beams attacking the peace. Having a job, this would signal the time to leave for work. This doesn't apply to me. I have no job. I went from having deadlines, meetings, and responsibilities to having nothing to do in one day. So, as the sun blasts off into my dining room window, my day starts by writing a brand new cover letter. I do this to at least keep my writing sharp. I am, after all, supposed to be a professional one. I can't send stale sounding cover letters for weeks on end without even attempting to modify them. The little self respect I have going for me is a product of this action. This and taking my wife to a train station and back each day are the only things keeping me level while the rest of my world falls apart. After pumping out a few different cover letters, I already feel like a battered gonzo. I get up and empty the leftover coffee into my cup. It is about 8am with an hour of cover letter construction under my belt. Unlike the first cup, this one I just down straight away. I pretend I have a boss standing behind me. I'm not in the comfort of my own home, and I must finish this coffee and get back to work. Actually, I am but nonetheless I drink it quickly and get back to work. Phase two involves looking for freelance writing jobs. I feel at a disadvantage in that only a few pieces of mine are published on the internet. I write the needy and let them know I have only the highest regard for written craft. I ramble on about my attention to detail and time flexibility, as if this will separate me from the rest. Please contact me soon, I plead to them. If you told me to write a series of articles on how Ashlee Simpson is undeniably the best musician ever, I'd go put on my favorite Isis record and do it for a pittance. After plodding my way through this process, I take a shower, hoping to start anew with a fresh outlook. Back at the computer, the next phase is the longest and most painstaking. As of now, my resume is on no fewer than five employment websites. Supposedly, companies with openings search for resumes and find people by what they are looking for. I haven't been contacted, so you can imagine my excitement to check my messages and e-mail every day knowing full well no one has found me intriguing enough to try out. I'm used to it, though, so it feels more like a daily job task than, say, rushing out to the mailbox every day to see if you got accepted into Harvard. In the same way, I scour these same sites looking for appropriate work. I find about four or five a day that seem on par with what I am capable of and interested in. I tailor the new cover letter even more for each one, then read over my resume for the thousandth time just to make sure there isn't a typo. Exhibiting one like it's a work of art in a museum would effectively end my chances with any company when the rest of the resume is bonafide cheese log on how important a role writing has played in my life. So, yes, I look it over more times than is really necessary before I finally push it through. After a few hours of this, I pick up my wife and have a normal evening devoid of worrisome job shit. We cook dinner, watch television, read, and go to bed. By 5pm, I am wiped. I feel like I have put in a full day of work, except there is no room for advancement as an unemployed loser wearing a pair of boxers and one slipper. I guess you could call this my cooler talk.