“Don’t stop showering,” a former coworker told me in hushed tones before I left the office for good.

He’d been through an unemployment season of his own, and I knew from the rare serious nature of his demeanor that I was receiving some sort of secret samurai code for surviving joblessness. “When you give up on personal hygiene, you wind up in a Bad Place.”

Okay. Got it.

It seemed like needless advice. Sound, but needless. I’ve always been a fan of personal hygiene. Would being unemployed really change that? Would I soon be gathering up my five different daily hair products and dumping them in the trash?

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I got laid off 3 months, 3 weeks, and 2 days ago. I’d been in that job for 15 years. I was told on a Tuesday that Friday was my last day: 3 days to pack up and say goodbye in my haze of shock and grief.

On my last day, I walked out of the office carrying 6 magazines (evidence from my last year of editorial work), 3 framed pictures of my family, and 1 plant.

And there were tears. I don’t know how many.

As a writer, it pains me that numbers tell the story of my unemployment best. A fitting injustice. As if words have abandoned me altogether.

Well, this blog is my attempt to woo them back.

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