Tick, Tick, Boom.

I wake up later and later each day. At first I felt this pressure, this urgency to act and find a new gig before anyone could even notice what I was lacking. A month went by and, as I was wrapping up my sixth interview with a company I was almost positive I would be working at, I received the ever common automated rejection email. Month one had been eaten up and spat out; now it was time for me to announce that I had been existing in limbo, expecting a reality that would not come. Month two was filled with nothing but silence. No jobs, no rejections, no acceptance, just silence. In the winter that silence was harder to bear. With the constant snowstorms, being stuck at home was far more justifiable. I didn't have to go anywhere, do anything; I just had to wait it out. Month two trudged along in the thick white snow of winter's end, but then came spring.

Usually, in the season of fertility, one would anticipate that with that would come more opportunity. Boy, was I right. Interviews left and right, more reasons to step outside the house, excitement and anticipation about the future. But, alas, much like what had occurred moments after I lost my job, I was making it to final rounds of interviews I was sure I'd aced only to get the automated rejection. The third month gave me courage, but also deep concern. When would I finally get a job? When would these interviews, all the research I would do for these companies, all the time I've spent applying pay off? Month four, you've grown weary and your eyes hang low, but you see that there is a light flickering somewhere in the distance. You have to make it there. Since all this time has passed, you start to feel this weird sense of shame. Like leaving the house at noon would be this clue that you were unemployed, almost as though it was tattooed on your forehead. This month also came with nothing. No interviews, no rejections, just silence in my inbox day in, day out. It wasn't that I had stopped applying; it was that the machine was no longer chugging.

Summer was turning its lazy head, and with summer came all of these events which caused people to anticipate rather than work. Marking one's calendar for the NBA Finals, the 250th birthday of our nation, the World Cup, so many things to look forward to that people simply took a step back from work. Nothing personal. If I were working during this time, maybe I would be consumed by this fog of excitement and anticipation too, but I am on the receiving end of other people's malaise. Now it is July, almost August come next week, and I am feeling this third emotion that's really hard to explain.

I haven't really left my house today, or the day before, or the day before that. I order in, hunker down, and just wait. I have been interviewing, but the communication is like that of medieval times where we relied on carrier pigeons or horse mail. However, our reality is that of the computer, where a few words here and there paint a picture that exceeds what the mind conjures with silence. Silence is opaque; it gives nothing and takes everything. It leaves one's mind constantly questioning, consuming itself much like the ouroboros.

You cannot give up, but you can acknowledge the complexity of what life presents you with. I live alone, which is a blessing, in the best city in the world, which is also a blessing, but during these times these blessings seemingly make life more complicated. I have no one to talk to in person during these times when I really need someone. I am in my own head; I distract myself with my phone and slowly feel my brain melting out of my ears. My ambition feels like it is dwindling, and I know my clock is ticking. It's nearly been six months. And these six months feel so long because I have experienced nearly every season, every emotion: victory, loss, purgatory, heaven, hell. It's hard to conceptualize all that time, especially because six months sounds like it should be longer than it is, but now it's almost August and I am in a better place, though a similar one nonetheless, than I started at.

I wake up later and later, and shut my blinds tighter and tighter, because the grip of time feels looser and looser. I am what I am, and it feels like I have never not been this. I live alone, I am alone, and until I find something to do which gives me purpose, I am this until I am not. I fight every day to change my reality, but that fight is difficult to constantly buck up to when it consistently fails to be conquered. However, a major reconciliation that has come with these past six months is my ability to be omnipresent within my life and the world around me. I am almost like the circadian rhythm of life, the rising and setting sun, the hanging moon. I have gone through the wide range of human emotion and experience while simultaneously feeling this sense of lack due to viewing work as one of the pillars of my identity, rather than simply something I do.

Writing this, fleshing out a thought, has made me realize that even the people with the, seemingly, fullest lives, working great jobs and having it all figured out, would not be able to look at my life and view it as full. My fullness and theirs are anchored in two very different things: one is what the outside sees, while the other is what the inside knows. The reality of life is that to work is to have an external identity, that which gives your life fullness, which is the one thing that I lack. What I ground my fullness on is my ability to view my life as both the host and the visitor, to see what I have, and to both study and live it. So yes, though this lack has been loud because it helps bolster external life, this time has demonstrated that through this lack I have blossomed with immense internal abundance. And once I finally, and hopefully this will be soon, get a job, my internal certainty will engulf my external strife.