"I hadn't understood how many days could be both long and short at the same time: long to live through, maybe, but so drawn out that they ended up flowing into one another. They lost their names. Only the words 'yesterday' and 'tomorrow' still had any meaning for me." Page 80.
Oh Camus, it's as if you've written these words just for me. I have never quite experienced the movement of time this way until my unemployment began stretching out into what feels like infinity. My days are so uniform that I actually bug my room mate about when we're going shopping so that I have something to break my days up with. It's torturous trying to find new things to do in order to fill my time, and even the act of finding new things feels like a repetitive task.
It's interesting that I can still remember when I'm supposed to do certain things, like my volunteer job, but I still frequently forget the date and what day it is. This is even with writing book notes almost daily so I can blog about them later. That means I write both the day and the date, usually early on in the day, but they are quickly forgotten. But I can remember that I have an interview coming up in ten days and counting, or that I'm going to go see my fiance in three days. Usually it's things that are within two weeks time, but it's a strange phenomenon that I can remember this and not that it's Wednesday.
The fact that I have so much "free" time stretched out in front of me has been excruciating. I don't know what to do with myself. I've been applying to jobs as often as I can possibly stand to. And right now I'm waiting to hear back from the university in Tennessee, and this has made it even worse than normal. Part of me doesn't want to even think about writing another cover letter unless I find out I didn't get the job, and the other part of me knows it's better to have letters out there and get accepted than to have to start all over again.
There are pressures too. My mom wants me to stop looking if I don't get the job in Tennessee, and go back to school. This is an option, and it's an option I wouldn't really mind, but I very much want to work. I've been in school my entire life, and I've worked through a large portion of it, but I am ready to do something else. It's possible obtaining an MBA will help me get a job, but I'm sure there are plenty of other librarians who are out of work who are right now, going through school, who will again glut the market at the same time I'd be looking for a job. So what's the point?
In the meantime, I'm going through the motions, waiting for the end.
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