Loving Unemployment

This isn't intended as a brag post, but parts of it may read that way, I'm sorry and hope you're not offended.

I've been unemployed since August of 2009. This isn't that rare, millions of American's are like me. What is different is unlike most American families in this situation my family isn't in a financial crisis and worried each month that we are going to lose a car, the house, or not have enough food to eat.

Yes I do draw unemployment, but it is less than half of what I made before I lost my job. However we have never lived above our means, we don't have any credit cards or bills that come with them. Between my unemployment and what Heather makes doing daycare at home we can pay all our bills each month and have also been able to completely pay off a rather large outstanding balance to a local hospital.

During this time Heather has had a major surgery with a week off work and a miscarriage that made her miss a cumulative 2 weeks of daycare and yet we are still current on all our bills, and have credits on a few.

We've been able to do this mostly by being smart, but we've also become big fans of Dave Ramsey who advocates being debt free and how to get there. We haven't followed his plan exactly, we've bought Alex a new bike, we go out to eat occasionally, etc but between him and advice our parents gave growing up we're actually SHRINKING our debt while I'm spending time with my family and waiting for the right job.

Please don't misread that last line, I'm still working hard for work. However I'm presently looking almost exclusively in my chosen profession rather than having to take the first paycheck someone dangles in front of me simply to make ends meet. I have a deadline of 2 months before my unemployment runs out that I will then open myself wide up to any job I'm qualified for that will allow me to provide for my family. In the mean time I've been able to be home and shoulder the household tasks during Heather's two medical problems, I've spent lots of time playing with and enjoying my son, and I've gotten a lot done around the house (and thought of a lot more I'd like to do.) I'm enjoying my unemployment, however I'm ready to work if anyone has a job in my field.

ATTENTION COOL KIDS, Geeks blazed the trails you're on

I'm a geek. I readily admit it, hell I use it to define myself to people when they first meet me. I was never one of the "cool kids" yet I regularly find they are "into" what interested me years earlier. Below are some examples.

Computers: This one is fairly obvious at first glance, but look again. In the early 80's while the cool kids were tie-dying their clothing, and meeting at the roller-rinks us geeks either were convincing our parents to get us a computer, or were teaching ourselves how to use the computers our parents had reluctantly let us use because they had gotten it for themselves for work and they thought maybe someday we might possibly get some value out of the things. While I never taught myself more than basic programming I can troubleshoot a computer, you can point to any component and I can tell you the proper name, what it does, and what the specs of a current generation of that component are. A few years after us geeks were handing in neatly typed papers for school our classmates started getting in on the act and getting computers, mostly for gaming but reluctantly for school work as well.

The Internet: So now everyone, geek and cool kid, had a computer, but us geeks went to the next level, we connected our computers together and were communicating back and forth. The cool kids started making fun of us again, talking about us sitting in our basement lairs talking about Star Trek and getting tanned by monitor radiation. Now the internet is everywhere. Cool hang-outs would be barren if they didn't offer free wifi access, you can't go 30 steps in a store without one of the cool kids with a cellphone out, not to their ear, but to their thumbs checking their facebook status.

Blogs: Ok I was late to this party, I admit. But the geek collective used blogs to spread news that traditional media ignored either because they didn't find interesting or didn't want out (Bill Clinton's affair with Monica was first reported on the Drudge Report, a for stories that were refused by the AP.) Then the cool kids started blogging about everything from what they had for supper to who they slept with that night. Not really the point, again we were there first.

It's not just technology either, look at the last few summers big blockbuster movies, all comic-book movies (Spiderman, X-Men, Hellboy, etc) hell even Star Wars was ours first and has been embraced by the cool kids.

My point is that even though the cool kids ridicule us, tease us, beat us up, they need us. They all follow each other meaning no one finds fresh new things, the geeks are the trail blazers, willing to take the risks find the awsome new technology, figure out how it will benefit the herd and return it to them. I wonder if Lewis and Clark were ever given a wedgie?