This not so hard

Last night, after I came home from someone else buying me dinner (the thing about being unemployed is that everyone starts buying you food—it’s awesome, yes, but I will also accept cat litter and luxury hair care products, in case you’re looking to purchase things for me), my unemployment paperwork had arrived from the Missouri Department of Labor and Industrial Relations Division of Unemployment Security (henceforth referred to as The Unemployment Office).  Did you know that I am eligible for like $320 a week as long as I am making every effort to find a new job?  For six months?  I can almost totally live on that, probably.

Unemployment lesson 1: vote Democrat.  Better payoffs.

There does seem to be an unholy amount of paperwork to fill out, because obviously they want to make sure that I am not cheating the system and collecting money that doesn’t belong to me (because obviously, if I am going to hoodwink the government out of money, I am going to do it for what amounts to a weekly minimum wage paycheck.  Good call.  Because that will clearly pay for the service plan on the iPhone I can no longer afford.).  It’s annoying to have to fill all of this paperwork out, but I have done way more annoying things for money.  For instance, the last 18 months of my life.

The good news is that, even though the market is tough right now across the board, every few weeks there seems to be a job that pops up that would be perfect for me; I know this because I have actually been looking for another job since August.  One such job opened up this week, minutes before I became unemployed, actually.  It’s in theater management, it’s in town, and it looks like it is both totally doable and slightly challenging.  Which means I would be perfect for it.  So I’ve submitted my resume—who knows, I might even get an interview, which might lead to a job.  Wouldn’t it suck if I had to start work before I could collect my first fat unemployment check?