Forget Burgundy

I’m entering into the third week of my recent unemployment. I’m starting to feel like being unemployed is a lot like being on a long sea journey and that I feel like the captain of a doomed vessel. I think that maybe I should be keeping a captain’s log as I navigate the treacherous waters of this horrible economy in my quest for employment.  It would look something like this:

Day 1: This is awesome! It’s 11 am and instead of staring at an excel spreadsheet on a computer screen…I’m in bed. At 11 am. And its WEDNESDAY. I could get used to this…

Day 3: Up early with a cup of coffee and a muffin – feeling great about embarking on my job quest. Sure the economy sucks, the unemployment figures are dismal, and the NYTimes just published its third “Young College Graduates with Degrees from Ivy League Schools are Working as Bar Managers and Paralegals Because There ARE NO JOBS” piece but there ain’t nothing gonna bring me down!

Day 5: I applied to 24 jobs two days ago. Why isn’t anyone responding? Maybe if I check my inbox for the fifteenth time this hour something will – a new email! It’s just Shopbop telling me about a sale that I can’t even think about – I’m unemployed, remember?

Day 7: Will the weekend ever end? I can’t go anywhere because I can’t spend any money because I don’t have a job and I’m not going to get closer to a job until everyone else gets back to work and responds to my applications. I hate the weekend.

Day 10: Three interviews, seven hours, and two badly blistered feet later – I need wine. Lots and lots of wine. Now.

Day 11: The blisters from wearing heels all day yesterday have only worsened. I’m super pumped that my prospective place of employment is so laid back and all but it’s severely unfair that I have to dress up, put on heels, and look professional while you get to interview me in a slouchy tshirt, black leggings, and flip flops. God, how I wish I could be you instead of me – you have a job. And no blisters.

Day 12: No follow up calls. No follow up emails. Nothing. Buy wine instead of dinner.

Day 13: Unemployment seriously ruins the weekend. Just two more days of waiting to hear nothing back from any of the next batch of 25 job applications I sent out or the people I interviewed with. Why didn’t I just lie and say, “Why yes! I am detail oriented! I am incredibly detail oriented!”? I will never be honest ever again. I will give up every shred of integrity oif that’s what it takes. What does that even mean, “detail oriented”? Who cares! I will be it! I will do anything just so I don’t have to spend another afternoon on the couch obsessively checking my inbox.

Yeah, it would look something like that –  with the lucidity and sanity of the first few days quickly giving way to the desperate rants of a madwoman.  

It’s taken every ounce of strength not to open the bottle of wine I brought with me when I moved from California as my “Celebration Wine” – the expensive wine I brought to open when I got my “first real job”.

But unemployment does not call for the good stuff – no, when you’re unemployed, you should be drinking cheap wine; cheap, cheap wine because it’s all you can afford.

Perhaps that’s why I was intrigued by a South African Chenin Blanc in the window of my corner wine shop that came with a measly $9.99 price tag. Chenin Blanc is one of my new favorite varietals. I’d only had Vouvray before, where the grape is manifested in a slightly sweet and fruity quaff that finishes with a rush of minerality – like licking granite. It’s unnervingly pleasant.

This wine, by the producer Kanu, was ripe and tasted of tropical fruits – litchi and melon – more than the ripe pears and apples I’d come to expect from Chenin Blanc. It had a tangy finish that was more like a scoop of passion fruit than a slick of granite and left me a little wanting – even at only $10/bottle.

Nonetheless, it calmed my frazzled nerves and helped me to steele myself against another day of chronic unemployment.

Sidenote: You’d think that with all this free time on my hands I’d be blogging more, right? No. Wrong. Seriously wrong. I’ve been focusing on finding ways to pay the rent and in the course of doing so have come across the opportunity to work with some seriously awesome wine people – and you’ll be hearing all about that in a bit.  I’m looking forward to branching out a bit and bringing you all more winey goodness….stay tuned!