Zero-Accountability

Flickr: Alyssa L. Miller

I’m never ready to wake up when the alarm sounds at 9 am. All things considered, I should be well-rested and thrilled to face the day, but instead I snooze until 10:30 am and then pull myself out of bed and wander through my house in a groggy stupor. Still half awake, I make tea, brush my teeth, check my emails. Summoning to mind my list of things to do for the day, I grumble, meander back to my bedroom, and flop onto my bed, face-down.

Unemployment yields a paradoxically long to-do list: there are cover letters to write, resumes to send out, informational interviews to schedule, thank-yous to script from completed informational interviews, and more emails with names of friends of friends whom I should solicit for more informational interviews.

There are articles to read from a roundup of news sites, so that, in my eventual cover letters to them, I can deem myself a “loyal reader” in good faith.

There’s a freelance article to be written. A column to edit for an unpaid internship. A phone call to return.

Any day is a mix of these things, the things I need to do (find a job), the things I ought to do but are not necessary (find alum on LinkedIn and stalk them for potential connections), and the things I should do but don’t have a time limit for or consequences for not doing (practice piano, learn French, put in laundry, floss).

I also need to call the insurance company to ask if I’m covered for dental…
(It turns out, I’m not.)

This is how, at 11:00 am, I find myself slapped with the harsh reality of unemployment, the land in which there is plenty to do but little motivation to do it. Although I’m aware of my objectives, I lack a shared goal, a team with which to achieve it, and a superior who expects to see results. In a workplace, there can be serious consequences for not getting out of bed in the morning or not completing one’s job (say, not getting paid). In my realm of zero-accountability, the only consequence of sloth is more of the same, an endless cycle of joblessness, laziness, bed-flopping.

I fix myself a second mug of chai tea and begin the day’s first cover letter, keeping in mind the image of festering all the while swearing it off.