One month into unemployment, reality has begun to introduce itself.

The job market is rougher than I expected. I scatter résumés everywhere and collect rejection notices with impressive consistency. At this point, I’m grateful when a company simply says yes or no.

Still, the month was a useful reset. This is the longest I’ve been unemployed in about seven years, and after spending the first few weeks wondering what I was supposed to be doing, I eventually decided to become properly lazy for once.

My sleep normalised. The dizziness and sudden exhaustion eased. I finally put some basic structure around hobbies I had kept postponing.

Not the ending I wanted, but I do feel lighter.

I am, after all, something of a specialist in unexpected lightning strikes.

Around the same time, I finally watched Misaeng.

For years I had assumed it was one of those dramas only real office workers could fully understand. More than a decade later, after enough office life of my own, I watched it and thought:

Oh.

This is apparently about me.

The metaphor that stayed with me most was the workplace as a simultaneous game of Go. In the actual game, an expert may play several opponents at once. At work, everyone somehow ends up doing the same thing—bosses, coworkers, customers, priorities, loyalties, politics.

Nobody asks whether you would like to play.

You are simply seated.

Oddly, Go itself seemed more considerate. The less experienced player gets black and moves first; the stronger player takes white and gives them room to try. Even disadvantage has rules.

Corporate life is less elegant.

I’m glad I watched the drama late. Watching it before working might have encouraged me to borrow someone else’s conclusions and mistake them for experience.

I’d rather learn badly but firsthand.

That has also changed how I think about the next company.

My own résumé has wandered through accounting, administration, forwarding, construction-site operations, KPIs, process improvement, transportation, inventory, and materials. Somehow it forms a chain.

What I no longer trust is a company’s exterior.

Good products, growing revenue, exciting projects, glossy metrics—none of that tells me what it feels like to work there.

LinkedIn offers the usual desirable traits: adaptability, collaboration, leadership, growth potential, prioritisation, culture add.

A lovely corporate hexagon.

Unfortunately, I am fairly contrarian and somewhat individualistic.

So perhaps the question is not how to become perfectly hexagonal, but which corners I can sand down and which ones I should keep.

Then an interview invitation arrived.

Onsite, in Virginia.

I was sitting in Holland!!

The company offered to support the trip, so suddenly unemployment became a field assignment.

I flew through Chicago to Washington, looked around Fairfax and Northern Virginia, and immediately understood why people like the area: clean, spacious, convenient, full of companies and government offices. I even toured apartments on Sunday, because apparently one interview is enough for me to begin mentally relocating.

Monday was the interview.

Panel format.

Terrifying.

Everyone looked extremely polished.

I did what I could.

I recently left another interview feeling optimistic and was rejected, so I have officially retired from post-interview fortune-telling.

Afterward, I had enough time to see Washington.

That plan immediately produced a minor transportation disaster. I confidently waited at the wrong sightseeing-bus stop, assured a European woman that it was definitely correct, and then watched every other tourist board an entirely different bus.

Eventually the two of us somehow entered someone else’s Uber.

The driver kept asking for Sonia.

Neither of us was Sonia.

Once he understood the situation, he laughed and gave us an accidental mini-tour anyway.

The woman wished me luck with the interview.

I choose to consider this auspicious.

Washington itself surprised me.

New York and Chicago feel like forests made of buildings; Washington felt more like a monumental garden—low skyline, enormous civic buildings, broad spaces, the Potomac running through it.

I sat on the tour bus and simply looked.

After months in Michigan, even seeing a proper river felt different.

Then I went home.

Still unemployed.

But somehow less stuck.

Back in Holland, everything was quiet again. I sold my electric scooter, but before handing it over I took one final ride through Saugatuck and Holland at sunset.

The paths were full of bicycles. The ice-cream shops were busy. Everyone seemed to have independently decided that this particular evening was worth being outside for.

For about forty minutes, I rode around with nowhere urgent to be.

Then I spent most of the following week sleeping fifteen hours a day.

By the time I opened my eyes and considered productivity, it was Sunday evening.

Some weeks should probably be like that.

No job yet, no grand conclusion either.

Just a slightly clearer idea of what I don’t want, what I might want, and which parts of myself I would rather not sand away for the sake of fitting somewhere.

Good enough for now.