Funmployed

What happens when the newsroom noise fades and you're left with your own story to edit.

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It felt decadent, like playing hooky with permission. I thought I'd give myself license to rest, free my head of the pressures of deadlines, and do nothing.

But by week two, I had to admit the novelty was starting to wear off. The day stretched long and quiet. When you've done something for decades, it's no longer a habit—it's who you are. Your body craves the motion. I even missed the familiar tyranny of Viber group chats, those little pings that told me where to be and what to do. My dog, formerly indifferent to my schedule, began looking at me with disdain, as if to say, "Stop bugging me. Shouldn't you be doing something?"

Then there was LinkedIn. Updating my profile felt like trying to summarize a marriage in a dating app bio. How do you condense decades of meetings, deadlines, and deadlines about meetings into a few bullet points? I toyed with: "Survived 12,483 meetings. Allergic to bad grammar. Strong opinions about meetings that should've been an email." But instead, I polished the prose until I sounded like someone who could "seamlessly pivot into new opportunities." Pivoting, I've learned, is unemployment's official verb.