You know exactly how long it's been since you left.
You're a realist. At your age you knew this wouldn't be a rapid route back to a job.
But this long, no, that's too long.
Now it feels like you need a reason, not the one that everyone says it is, the numbers, the reorg, the tough times. If it is about a role that went away, does that mean I did too?
Surely not.
You're still here, the person who's worked the network, old colleagues, lunches, taken a desk at a co-working space, applied for jobs, none quite right but you kept going.
Then used that wonderful coffee spot around the corner and made some friends but they didn't help and now you've cleared a space at home to work from and watched your daily debris scatter around the floor.
It's been a long time.
That's not what you hear from your friends, sure it's been a while, taken longer than you thought, after all at your age it statistically will. The more often you hear that the more you start to notice a feeling, that this is real.
As that sets in and the choices of new content on your streamer seem to dwindle, you wonder about the emperor's new clothes of all of this.
Have I been walking around wearing nothing but a forced smile that says I'm fine, when the reality is that I'm beginning to feel like it was personal and along with my old job, I don't exist. I am.
Redundant.
It doesn't look good as a word, ascenders and U. It's a sharp word that cuts both ways.
Until it doesn't.
You think about it and no one uses the word around you, which is faintly embarrassing because, well these are the people you know and perhaps they reflect your reaction to the experience? Perhaps not?
What's a little more than obvious is this, it is just a word, a set of invisible clothes and you have been living your life to an extent on display, for all to see.
While that's a little awkward, there's a place for a liberating voice too that says, maybe it's time to find a new word for this situation, one that fits and feels right.
A little like the clothes an emperor would wear.
Well cut, lovely cloth but above all curated, chosen.
How to choose, how to shop, there's a couple of questions. Where do you get to walk in, look in a mirror and ask, what next?