I accepted the very first job that I could find when I was 19, living in Boston, and jobless. I had room mates, and we had nothing to eat...so Mack, a friend, went to visit his Grandmother, who received food stamps...and she gave us a box of macaroni and cheese out of the goodness of her heart. We ate that for 2 days...and then when I got my job I was allowed to eat at work...but only if the cook gave us the food.

I've never had a real job. I'm given enough money each month to comfortably get by and work at what I want.

Many years ago I was let go from a job. But found another soon after. Now this was some 50 years ago when jobs were plentiful,

Well, instead of nervous eating, what you need to do is get back into the game and start networking. The sooner you do, the better you will feel about yourself, the situation, and the future. The worst thing to do is lay around day after day while your work experience gets cold.

Yes. How do I cope?
Thriving mentally, everything else not awesome

I have on and off. I very much enjoy my jobless time. I use it on myself, growth, health, lots of nature time and start a new hobby.

nice.. what's the stuff in the box?

i was jobless most of my life i worked a few jobs here and there temporarily to get by but most of the time i was just a dependent but i'm not a big vanity spender so i don't need a large income to live well

Yes, I did. But I had a severance pay. I still had to find a job in a market where nobody was hiring for the positions I worked on my life at the same rate I was making. I ended up taking a job to get by my last years of retirement, making a third of what I had been making. I had to sell my house. That's a whole other calamity that I don't have the time to discuss. I wouldn't be known at the time they closed the place I was working. I was living paycheck to paycheck literally. If it wasn't for that severance pay, I never would have made the gap. Then I had to get out from under that mortgage. Then I was living paycheck to paycheck with that skimpy ass job I got until I retired. And my damn Social Security paid me more money than that job did. So by finding a cheap rent, which was really lucky because I had a pet and a small pension from the place that had closed, I was now living comfortably again. If folks all that came out with a voice to text translator, if it's messed up, I'm not fixing it. I'm sick of the mistakes these things make.

I'm jobless right now. Living on retirement savings. But I do have an interview on Monday.

2 weeks - once - then re-hired at the same place.
Total of maybe 14 jobs (including summer employment in my teens), lifetime.

I have been, I started 8 billion side hustles with every skill I had, called in every favor I was owed and did some heathenous things most people would blush about and hide their faces. But I survived. I have no shame about it either. We do what we must to survive.

I've been out of a job since June 2025. The job market is brutal. I should be starting something new in 2 weeks. My savings were really dipping low.

All depend why I'm unemployed and what my bills are
As long as unemployment doesn't run out I'll be fine

I will be for the first time at the end of the year. It's kind of exciting after years of 24/7.shifts, like a blank canvas. I don't know if I will have trouble finding another job, but I plan to do some volunteer work to get experience in another area.

Retired in February .. first time without an earned paycheck in > 40 yrs.

Severence ends in Feb 2027 .. on retirement funds after that

I was fired the day after Christmas in 2011, with literally an hour to go in my shift. Usually, this company would fire employees before they even had the chance to start their day, and I think I know why they waited until I was finished.

Either way, knowing I couldn't go home because my mother was home and with my girlfriend, I began driving around looking to apply to jobs. I found a few places including a yet to be open Planet Fitness. They were the first place to ever tell me that I needed to apply online. Seriously? I had no time for that!

So, I filed for unemployment, and looked for odd jobs for a bit until I was able to get back on my feet with not one,but two jobs.