Unemployment - Day 1

So for the first time in about 3.5 years, I woke up this morning not really knowing what to do. First of all, my body seems to be programmed to wake up at 7am. But for the first time in a long time, I was able to actually just roll back over and sleep some more. That's usually what I do on the weekends, but I've never experienced that on a weekday that wasn't a holiday.

But all in all, I seemed to have survived Day 1 of unemployment. It was actually a fairly filled day. I went an opened an IRA account to roll over my 401K. My dad, which I must add, is actually very excited about the idea of me not going to work. He's decided that this is the time for him to give me a tutorial into the world of day-trading. According to him, all people that want MBAs must love stocks. I just think that it's the Asian blood of gambling coursing through his veins. Regardless, I've learned where to find my mutual funds in the newspaper and what all the little symbols and abbreviations stand for. Albeit, I need a magnifying glass to read it. So I've become slightly versed in stock trading and may actually use that to supplement my severance package and unemployment checks.

As for signing up for unemployment benefits today, that was an adventure in itself. First off, I'm happy that I did it. Since I'm probably never ever going to see Social Security payments, this may be the only way that I'll ever get back some of the money that I've been paying to the government. Of course, the $336/week checks are really nothing to hoot and holler about. I did learn today that some company is royally screwing up and has misentered some guys Social Security number into the system. Somehow, all of his earning are also being entered under my number. This caused me to have to wait for over 45 minutes in the Social Security office to get a printout verifying that XXX-XX-XXXX actually belongs to me. Apparently, the little blue Social Security card does not fulfill that purpose. Everything ended up being resolved in the end, so there's a happy ending.

Plus, I have a potential lead for a new job, so that seems promising. Otherwise, there are a lot of jobs that I'm highly interested in on monster.com. Now comes the hard part of learning how to write cover letters again. Of course, this will take a backseat to my essays, which are slowly coming along.

I wonder what I'll do tomorrow...