Count ‘em. It’s now been a week since I was laid off work and I’ve spent at least five of those nights drunk. It’s not like I wanted to drink. It wasn’t a conscious decision I made to crawl into a bottle or anything. This has all been my friends’ fault.

Each night, friends from work, friends from home, friends from college, friends of friends have decided to take me out to commiserate about being out of work. And they all have the same advice for me: Drink up!

Now, five nights of this is about all I can take. My body can’t handle any more alcohol. It knows that I have stuff to do. I have resumes to put together. I have cover letters to write. I have job leads to follow through on. I can’t waste my mornings sleeping off hangovers.

Throughout the four years that I had my job with my former company, I always knew that I had to update my resume. And I always put it off. It is one of the most loathsome tasks I can imagine – condensing your career to one single 8 ½” x 11” piece of white paper.

However, that isn’t the worst of it. Due at the end of this week, is my application to take the Principles and Practices Exam, the eight-hour exam necessary to become certified as a professional engineer. This isn’t your ordinary rinky-dink application. They require a written history of your work experience. So for the past few days, I have been writing down each project I worked on for the past four years, along with start and end dates, and specific tasks I accomplished. It is a major pain in the ass.

Fortunately, I had started this before I was laid off, so I had a list of projects I had assembled. However, I have had to recall specifically everything I did without the use of written files. I know I’m forgetting so much.

Imagine how difficult it would be to do this completely blind. With zero information at your disposal. I can only take solace in the fact that I’m not alone. There is one person in my review class for this exam that has yet to start on his application. He’s in for a world of hurt these next few days.

Anyway, that’s all for now. I have mucho tales of drunken exploits, but those will have to keep for another day, as I have this confounded application to finish.

Days out of work: 7

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