07.08.05

Sweet, Sweet Unemployment

It's now been over two months since I left my job at the Mellon Foundation, and I've only just found the time to return to this website.

People with jobs don't appreciate the terrific time pressures of unemployment. Having replaced a daily grind of drudgery with the ability to do your heart's desire, all day, every day, until the credit lines run out, you find yourself actually having to go out and do that thing, all day, every day. And you get tired. That Russian novel is not going to read itself, the film festival waits for no man, and if it's not four A.M., those bars are still open.

If you're working a soul-crushing day job, it may be permissible to come home, plop down, and watch four hours of television to "decompress". But the unemployed person doesn't have that kind of time. Nor is there the luxury of the breakfast ritual, the lunch hour, the after-work drink, the early Friday departure, or the lazy three-day weekend. When you are working, you tell yourself "I would do this, that and the other if only I didn't have to go to the office/tuna cannery/construction site. Oh the things I would do." When you're unemployed, you have no such excuses. And since few people have the honesty and self-esteem to say "if I weren't working, I would sit around on my ass all day drinking beer", the days are just packed.

Still, not working has its small consolations. For example, just the other day I realized I would never have to think of NACUBO again. NACUBO is the National Association of College and University Business Officers, an august organization of university business officers deeply involved in some Mellon work I was carefully avoiding towards the end of my tenure. I can't really tell you anything more about them, because doing so would involve reading about their activities online, and thanks to the magic of not having to work at Mellon anymore, this is something I have promised myself never to do. Years from now, when I go to my grave, I will do so in a state of complete and satisfied ignorance about Nacubo's activities, goals, mission, membership, history, composition, governance, headquarters, logo, leadership, and, God forbid, vision.

Multiply this by the number of other entities that populate the world of higher education, add Plone, raise it all to the power of Chandler, and you get some idea of the thrill my life has become. It's hard to scan the technology section of the newspaper without coming across a mention of some project I no longer have to give a whit about. It's fortunate, then, that I have so little time to read the technology section anymore. Busy!

Of course, you always give something up in even the happiest of transitions. I had a deep fondness for the Andrew W. Mellon coffee machine, which understood my needs and never hesitated to fill them. Unlike earlier coffee machines in lower pay brackets, it did not make any demands before granting me a mug of what I needed most. There was no insistence that I grind anything, or measure out scoops into a filter, or even pour water through a grate. All I had to do was insert a pre-sized plastic coffee container and push a button to get a cup of the life-giving.

Andrew W. Mellon coffee machine, I will not forget you. I sneak into the Bentley Hotel sometimes, just three blocks away, to use their super-fancy one-touch cappucino maker, but my heart will forever remain on 62nd st.

I also miss the tortoises. For reasons lost to history, a pair of tortoises has inhabited the courtyard of the 62nd street office for many years, hibernating under a bush during the long winter, and coming out to stroll and sun themselves when the weather grows nice. These tortoises are periodically lost to attrition and replaced (one of the current set, the Mellon intranet chirpily reports, is named after a program officer's favorite interior decorator), but they have been a fixture for years. I remembered the tortoises from my very first visit to the Foundation three years ago, as a supplicant for funding, and I wish I had been around long enough to see them wake up this time around.

The whole Mellon setup in the city was rather swank. For all the stodginess and bad artwork of its five adjacent townhouses, I liked the labyrinthine interior, various levels meeting halfway, mystery offices tucked in to every corner, as likely or not to reveal an attractive business-casual young woman whose responsibilities sadly never overlapped mine. My own office was at the uppermost corner of one of the end buildings, and I shared it with a peppy, matronly, highly medicated telephone system consultant whose long hours of hushed phone conversations about personal, career and life goals I worked hard to ignore.

Adjacent to the office were three rooms, each a great source of pleasure. On the right was a spacious bathroom with a large shower and excellent cell phone reception. Across the hall was a staff lounge with comfortable sofas and a refrigerator that magically replenished itself with juice every workday. And on the left was the best room of all, the nap room, a small bedroom with a twin bed, dresser and lockable door that was completely uninhabited for my first two months at the Foundation. As best I could tell, it was supposed to serve as an emergency bedroom for employees stranded in the city by a blizzard, power outage or other calamity. But I came to know it well as a happy refuge where I could lay down and collect my thoughts for an hour or two in the morning and early afternoon, emerging refreshed, rested, and ready for another hour of funding worthy open source projects.

Of course, I only got to enjoy this perfect work environment two days a week (the other three I spent on the long and draining commute to Princeton) but even this precious idyll got cut short by the Breastfeeding Coworker.

I never saw her face. She never saw mine. All along our battle was one of attrition, watching, waiting, wearing down the unseen opponent. My first hint of a dissonant note in the workplace was a small black bag left in the nap room. It contained paper towels, strange zipped-up cases and - ominously - plastic baby bottles. Soon it became impossible to rest my feet for even ninety minutes before I would hear an angry rattling of the doorknob, and overhear an indignant female voice on the staircase attempting to establish my identity, demanding that I vacate at once. Or else I would return from a late lunch, heavy and torpid with beer, only to find the door of the nap room securely locked from the inside, the same familiar voice proclaiming that the room was occupied.

Work became intolerable. Deprived of my restorative afternoon siesta, I grew crabby and restless. The deep sofas in the staff lounge were not as good for my back; the wide benches on the lockable rooftop garden remained undiscovered. My productivity suffered.

There was no reason we had to fight. The room, after all, had both a bed and a chair. I had no interest in the mechanics or erotic appeal of milk-pumping; all I needed was to close my eyes and concentrate for a spell on the cares of office; I would have been happy to face the wall. My mysterious rival only needed to sit for a half hour in the chair, the bed was completely wasted on her and made useless to everyone else whenever she was there. We could have shared. But pride is a terrible thing. Once aroused, the flames of resentment burned bright and there was no question of mutual accomodation.

I might have been able to hang on despite these heavy blows if the other three days of the week - the Princeton days - had not been such a drain. But the three hour round-trip drive (five hours if I took the train) was more than humanity could bear. And Princeton itself, with its corn-fed students, weird Guatemalan servant class, and complete absence of any decent lunch spot left nothing to recommend it. The chance of someday accidentally hitting Paul Krugman with my car did not begin to compensate for the long hours of staring at red taillights on Route 1, or the many meters of bad hot dogs despondently eaten at the WaWa.

So I left. For all the heavy responsibilities of unemployment that I knew would fall upon me, despite the certitude that my departure would leave open-source computing in higher education rudderless and adrift, I knew there was no other choice. Periodically I look back and think to myself, "if only you hadn't quit that job, you wouldn't be waking up at dusk, and the entire day would still be before you". Or else I gaze overwhelmed at yet another back-to-back week of free summer concerts, festivals, and fairs, wondering how to even begin to arrange my days to cover half of what is made available to me.

But then the thought sustains me - if I were not doing this, it would be someone else's son or daughter in my place. Someone else would have to bear this burden. And so I shake out my bedclothes again in hope of finding a stray quarter, shave my three-day beard with my sharpest dull razor, and head out into that lonesome New York night.