Going through unemployment with a joyful heart

It’s easy to become bitter when you are jobless. Almost too easy. So I decided to turn my situation around and value this chapter of my life, just like a soldier would cherish his physical scars. He was there, he fought, he survived. What’s to be ashamed of?  

The same goes for me. I chose to move in the U.S. anticipating the feelings that will follow: anxiety from not finding fast enough a job, fear of getting broke, envy over other people’s car and vacations, worthless from not being a published journalist anymore and so on. 

My internal battles will forever mark me and I have no intention to stop this. 

This sadomasochistic tendency goes back a long way to my childhood, when I used to push my palms against mom’s cactus spines. Just to see how much pain I can take. As an adult, the trials I set up for myself got psychological.

But it wasn’t I until moved to the other side of the planet, that I really became an adult. My soon be 25 years feel heavier, but in a good way, as if someone placed a big pile of encyclopedias in my arms.

Except I don’t particularly love this kind of lecture. It’s plain hard. My brain craves easy reading novels, the type that you skim through while sunbathing on the beach. Yes, I wear glasses, but I’m not a nerd or a genius for that matter. 

My strategy? Just like I became addicted to healthy foods by eating more of them, I will go after hardship and hope for the best.