Doing nothing is rather hard to do

Unemployment.

It's awkward, let's be real.
Interesting things happen when you're by yourself with not much going on and apparently no purpose in life.

Thankfully, orientation starts on Monday and I will happily depart the world of the jobless with scraps of my sanity still intact, but before I do, I wanted to leave behind this list of reasons why unemployment is the worst. Read it, and be encouraged that no matter what happens to you, at least you don't talk to strangers about cheese.

The Unemployment Effect:

#1. The Facebook Background
     I think I set world records for how many times a person can check Facebook in one hour. If someone had changed my desktop background to a screenshot of the Facebook homepage, it wouldn’t have increased how many times I saw it every day. With my homepage constantly on standby in the background of my life, I would jump on each new notification like a female college freshman on a jar of Nutella, then impatiently sit and stare at the screen, waiting for a socially acceptable amount of time to pass before responding. After all, it simply wouldn’t do to be answering all queries with 10 seconds of the time they were posted… people might get suspicious.

#2. Loose Connections
     Spending a lot of time at home by myself led to some interesting consequences. In addition to a decline of passable social skills and inability to sustain a decent conversation, my thoughts started leaking their way out into my words. Normally this wouldn’t be too much of an issue, but my thoughts are rarely complete, coherent sentences. They run more along the lines of, “So that’s why this but the door was oh but it doesn’t matter because well it’s not too important anyway and the dog needs the internet for the next couple hours.”

#3. The Cheese Factor
     I mentioned that decline of passable social skills, right? I denied this particular side effect for a long time, but even I had to admit things were going downhill after a conversation I had two weeks ago, when the
words “I love cheese” escaped my lips. Not simply “I like cheese” or even “cheese adds a certain taste palette to various foods which I find rather enjoyable.” No. With enthusiasm, I proclaimed my undying love for cheese and proceeded to discuss with a near-stranger how each type is just as good as the others.
Needless to say, I was horrified later when I realized this person probably now knows me as “that cheese girl.”

#4. Siren Sweatpants
     I’m pretty sure that in the beginning, when God declared it was not good for man to be alone, he also muttered under his breath that it is not good for April Ether to wear sweatpants all day long. Moses just didn’t catch that part, I guess. The siren call from those heavenly garments of flexibility and sweet-baby-angel kissed soft fabric may be almost irresistible, but to quote Admiral Akbar, “IT’S A TRAP.” When it became necessary to leave the house (and actually look somewhat like a normally functioning human being), my body protested against the relative torture and confinement of even a pair of jeans. “These are not clothes! This is madness, who came up with this preposterous idea?”
Along that thought, sweatpants quickly become the only pair of pants that fit when a lot of free time and a fully stocked fridge get together and produce the type of food baby which doesn’t go away in a few hours, but crashes on your couch to stay for a month or two.