To Do List For The Fifteen Or So Months I've Been Unemployed

Hey there people who might not even realize that I still post stuff here.  The purpose of this blog was to be a repository for my more-stylized/formal pieces, whereas J-Ro's Syntax Eros was created for my more extemporaneous rants.  I guess this qualifies as the former.  I want to thank McSweeneys.net for rejecting this piece.  I figure maybe it was too close in theme to Erica Reder's Recession Resumé to be published.  I wonder if she spent four months writing it, since I started mine two months before hers was even published.  Oh well.  I think maybe it's time for me to start submitting my essay pieces to magazines.  Because those still exist.  So, without any more whining, here it is...

To Do List For The Fifteen Or So Months I've Been Unemployed

• Finish the paperwork HR gave you that would provide an extra eight weeks of severance pay at full salary (of course, HR could have returned your calls and/or emails, but then they'd have had to pay you).
• Drink through the twelve weeks of severance pay that they had to give you, regardless of whether you filled out aforementioned paperwork.
• Finish that novel you started writing in 2002, when you freaked out that you were turning 30 in a year and needed to accomplish something.
• Take a sketch comedy writing class with a member of The State.  Stop writing sketches immediately after class ends and you've made the teacher snort from laughing so hard.
• Finish (or actually record) any of the songs you've started writing since 2003.
• Break up with your girlfriend via text message (accidentally).
• Manage to go on a second date from an OK Cupid encounter.
• Go out of town five days after breaking up with your girlfriend via text message with plans to meet up with a single lady you met on the internet at a major music festival.  Never meet that single lady (it will later be revealed that she came down with a case of swine flu).  Sleep with the friend of your friend you haven't seen in ten years that he's had a crush on since high school instead.  Repeatedly.
• Find a missed connections post on craigslist that is actually meant for you.
• Get broken up with by out-of-town girl a week before your birthday.  Celebrate said birthday alone at the bar with a Guinness while upbeat 80s music plays in the background.  Use the fly you find in the bottom of said Guinness to score a free Guinness without a fly (just barely).
• Wake up before noon two days in a row.  Three if you're feeling jaunty.
• Move back in with your mom and dad to the house you've left five times previously.
• Update at least one of your three blogs (four if you count the record label) on a weekly monthly semi-annual basis.
• Sing "Round Here" by the Counting Crows at a karaoke bar in Asheville, NC in front of complete strangers while in the midst of a road trip to relocate your best friend/lesbian sidekick and her three cats to Florida.  Your 17-year personal moratorium on entering the state of Florida is now ruined.  Upon returning home on the first flight out of Tampa, have Facebook inform you that out-of-town girl is now "in a relationship" not with you.
• Go on a third date with anyone since being dumped by out-of-town girl.
• Go on a road trip to Punxsutawney, PA for Groundhog's Day.  Try to sleep on a movie theater seat.  Freeze your tokhes off.  Realize you and your friend are the only humans over 18 who aren't drunk at 4am while gathered at Gobbler's Knob.  Attempt to eat a 2 pound hamburger on the way home.  Fail to eat a 2 pound hamburger.  After enduring long hours subjected to Sugarland and Lonestar, arrive home and check Facebook.  The day before was out-of-town girl's birthday.  She is apparently now ENGAGED to the fellow she was heretofore "in a relationship" with.  Your mutual friend will ask if she's spoken to you.  You will say she hasn't, but that Facebook has.
• Transfer all your old VHS tapes to DVD.
• When  one of your closest friend's step-father dies, leave a Facebook comment on his sister's page that, though heartfelt, comes off flippant at best, racist at worst.
• Write your cousin who wrote the book "Doc Hollywood" to ask for advice on finishing/shopping your novel.
• Have sex with your ex-girlfriend you broke up with 5 years ago because you were both too neurotic.  After all, they did that on Seinfeld and it worked out just fine.
• Sacrifice your vague financial stability to follow your dreams instead of stressing out over being "comfortable" but unhappy.
• Get job in retail doing commission-based sales in attempt to finance your dreams later by being miserable now.