Tray of the Week, No. 5

Three weeks into unemployment and the days are equal parts bliss and insanity. This week’s tray features a snapshot of unchained unemployed life.

📧 Email Subject Line I Now Fear:

“Update on your application.” Not an update. Not my application. Just another choose-your-own-adventure rejection after three rounds of improv theatre.

→ Read The Dispatch: The Love Bomb Rejection: Why It Shouldn’t Take Three Interviews To Say No.

👕 The Unemployment Uniform™️:

Outfit That’s Doing All the Heavy Lifting: [these pants], [this hoodie], [these shoes]. Comfy enough for spiralling on Reddit, trend-chasing enough that I don’t feel like a full goblin, and practical enough for my bi-daily bay walks. (And no, I’m not wearing this to interviews. Don’t insult me.)

🚶 Bi-Daily Ritual That’s Keeping Me Alive:

Kicking off each day with an hour-long walk around the bay, coffee in hand. Honestly? It’s the one thing I look forward to when I wake up. The steps are STEPPING. RIP this ritual once full-time work resumes.

→ Read The Soft Stack: Tools & Rituals For Surviving Unemployment.

🐱 Something That Gave Me Catholic-Level Guilt:

I found a random cat in my apartment complex’s back yard. I foolishly fed it once, and suddenly it’s meowing at my door like we’d signed a lease together. Reddit says it’s “masterful manipulation” on the cat’s part, but hearing those cries were DEVASTATING. If my apartment were bigger (and pet-friendly), I’d probably have a new roommate by now.

🪞 Object That Gaslit Me This Week:

My bathroom mirror. I swear it’s on a delay… one second I’m giving respectable job candidate, the next I’m giving feral man who hasn’t left the house in three days. And don’t even get me started on selfies with the front camera… have I always been this disgusting?