Your Unemployed Daughter

photo credit: Diego Cupolo
Your Unemployed Daughter has adopted some questionable behavior in this, her 7th week of unemployment. I suppose it stands to reason.

She stays up far too late. At first she was blaming it on that Caleb Carr book she was reading, where the psychologist tracks down the lady who kills her own babies, breaking the “natural bonds” of motherhood that every man believes every woman to have, at least in the late 1800s.

Despite that description, it’s pretty compelling. This lady is pure evil, reminding me, in fact (jaunty leather jacket? manipulative shifts from victim to sex kitten to destroyer?) of Whori Sturgess, aka, That Woman Who Fired Me. I’m about 100 pages from the end. It’s hard to put down.

So, I’m staying up til 4 am, reading this book, trying to finish it. But then it’s so hard to get up at 9 am. Or even 10. In fact, yesterday, I woke up at – and I’m rather embarrassed to admit this – 1 pm.

Your Unemployed Daughter has not done that, if you’ll recall, since she was a rebellious teen.

It’s not always the book’s fault, I know. For example, last night, I was summoned out by my former EIC to have a late-night drink and celebrate the fact that she now has a job! Congrats, K! (And a good one, too.) How could I say no?

And then, when we left the bar, how could I go to sleep right away? There were Google Analytics to be parsed, emails to be written, Facebook friends to be cajoled into writing posts, Gchat companions to be harassed…

Suffice it to say, 4:05 am is my new bedtime.

Now, before you rush to judge, let me just ask whether this is such a horrible thing. Today I got up at noon. I mean, that’s 8 hours. Is it wrong that my 8 hours has shifted to those of a night worker (who doesn’t have a job)?

Just because I don’t leave my house til 7 pm to go to the gym, and then maybe to the bar at 11:30 – just because I consider 9 am way too early for a yoga class – does that make me less of a functioning member of society?

Perhaps my behavior is in some part due to the fact that I will, in all truth, be going into an office next week. I will be freelancing for TK Company, copy editing a book for TK client on things like pineapples and other healthy alternatives to drugs.

(Not to worry, I will still be Your Unemployed Daughter. I will always be Your Unemployed Daughter.)

Despite this being freelance, they will expect me in the office at a certain time before 2 pm. And so, my sleep schedule will need to shift back. Alas, as part of me is rather enjoying this return to youth, minus Mom and Dad nagging at me to get out of bed and the paltry allowance (sorry, guys).

And yet, even though no one nags, I do feel a certain guilt upon waking at noon and seeing how much remains to be done. Especially when I have 8 pm plans.

And yet … yet … I have woken for so many years at the hour of 7 or 8 or maybe 9 am (back in our magazine salad days). How many sleep-deprived weeks have passed that I can never reclaim? How many sleepless nights spent worrying over someone else’s deadline or typos or whether the trucks got there in time?

And what do I have to show for all of that but some worry lines and a big fat headache?

So you know what? I fucking deserve this. I’m taking a nap.