T-minus 1 until funemployment

Today is my last day of work. I’m terribly excited and I’m afraid I’ve become one of those obnoxious people that dances around the office while everyone looks on in disgust. Nope, I know I’ve become one of those people. I’m wearing my pink party shirt and I WILL strike victory poses in the hall.

There have been tons of articles, blogs, and sundry posted about the new crop of laid-off recessionists who are living off their unemployment and having a damn good time. I can’t claim to have been laid-off so what do I call myself? Rather than tell everyone that I was quitting my perfectly good, fairly well-paid job to vagabond around the continent, I told everyone I was “taking a sabbatical.”

See, everyone understands sabbaticals. They conjure up images of academic expeditions to study beetles or scholarly book-writing. I didn’t have to do as much explaining about why I was hitting the road to travel. At the beginning, I felt the need to justify my trip by interviewing people along the way about their recession experiences. I don’t really need to do that anymore. I’m sure I’ll hear plenty of tall tales, and I promise to credulously document them here. Other than that, I’m wide open.

I like the term funemployment. It accurately portrays my jobless state while indicating that I’m planning to enjoy the hell out of it. Since I’m making a go of supporting myself from my vast network of websites, I could call myself self-employed, but it doesn’t have quite the ring to it. And the odds are good that I’ll have to get a job when I return. Websites just aren’t what they used to be.

So, tomorrow I will wake up without a job and set about packing for my trip to Mt Rainier next week.  Huzzah!