7 Things I Tried While Unemployed in 2022

I quit my job last year and spent all of 2022 on a... Sabbatical? Career break? OK fine, a dicking-around spree.

If I'm being completely honest, I quit working for vain, age-related reasons. I was 35 and I'd never be 35 again, I reasoned. The window for doing something fun while still arguably young was was rapidly closing. 

Less shallowly, I wanted to find an identity or interests outside of work. Seriously. I loved my job so much that I never put any effort into discovering other stuff I might like. Time to change that, I thought.

Here's what I tried out in 2022:

1. Freelancing

Terrified of the abyss of unemployment, I all but threw myself into freelance writing in the beginning of 2022. Surprise, surprise... I burned out.

Books like The Freelancer's Bible, Solo: How to Work Alone, and Book Yourself Solid, which I ate up, made me feel overwhelmed by all the trappings of a successful freelance career. I hated feeling obliged to network and build my brand and score gigs and be part of a community and meal prep budget-friendly lunches all at the same time. 

Being emotionally invested in a freelance career isn't worth it. So little of it (client budgets, competitors) is within your control. So I decided that I didn't want to be a "successful" freelancer; just a "surviving" one would do.

I did and am still doing okay with freelance writing. I will say, though, that freelancing doesn't exactly serve growth opportunities on a platter. I had to seek them out, which was hard since I had to get people to pay me for stuff I hadn't done before. But I got the chance to do consulting and coaching, which was quite rewarding. 

2. Food rescue & freeganism

Inspired by Singaporean freegans like Colin Lau and Daniel Tay, I spent the the first 6 months of 2022 exploring the "freeconomy": food rescue, dumpster diving, the freegan network. I wanted to emulate my heroes, who spent practically nothing.

You really can get everything outside of the established financial system, it turns out. But it takes a lot of work. Both physical (hauling cartons of food, processing and sorting, cooking, etc.) and emotional labour (organising communities, swapping, maintaining relationships, logistics).

What seemed very idyllic and kampung from the outside, turned out to be quite exhausting on the inside. I learnt that the desire to save money isn't enough; it takes passion. Which... I lack.

I also tried out using Olio to procure everything for free, from plastic bags to clothes to household goods. Trouble is, with no monetary barriers to obtaining goods, you end up wanting more and more stuff. People really do give away nice things. I started camping on the app to snatch up nice clothes, shoes, and other consumer goods that I really didn't need.

3. Deliveroo

At Jon's suggestion, I started doing Deliveroo in June. My first job was delivering Crave nasi lemak to someone in my neighbourhood. 

I was hooked. Doing Deliveroo is eye-opening and world-changing. I love making deliveries on my bike. The sunshine and physicality of it. And I love checking out what people eat for lunch, what their homes look like; looking at the latest flyers at void decks and keeping up with the latest in housing estate upgrading programmes. 

I tried doing food delivery in the CBD, which was fascinating and weird. It made me think a lot about prestige, class, and success. Who was higher up on the social hierarchy: the person making $20 an hour delivering salad, or the megabucks professional eating said salad in between lunchtime meetings?

Gig work is seductive. Turn on the app, get a job, move goods from Point A to Point B, get paid. Done. No need to upskill yourself or network or play depressing middle-management games. 

The pay isn't great, but it's on tap. Maybe paradoxically, doing food delivery helped me feel in control of my income (something I certainly didn't get from freelancing).

4. Part-time work

I spent a lot of time in malls for food delivery and couldn't help noticing all the part-time job vacancy ads. Picturing myself doing the Barista FIRE thing, I applied for a few.

Turns out, while many retailers claim to be hiring part-timers, the working hours are at least 30 hours a week (6 hours a day, 5 days a week). So almost full-time, but minus full-timer benefits like paid leave or medical insurance. I ended up working at Kinokuniya, one of the few employers with 16-hour work weeks.

In retail, the going rate is $10/hour (although some shops pay as much as $14/hour while F&B outlets generally pay more). Also as long as you earn more than $500/month, up to 20% of your earnings will go to CPF, so your take-home will be lower. Ouch.

I want to laugh at how hung up my colleagues and I used to be, in those white-collar professional days, about highfaluting shit like "company direction" and "growth prospects". Things like good salaries, leave days, sick days, medical and dental claims, flexible WFH policies, etc., we took for granted. Looking back, they seem like amazing privileges.

5. Couple stuff

Jon also quit his full-time job in May this year. When I was the only unemployed half of the couple, I had let my life slide to shocking proportions. I spent all my time on idiocy, indulging my Olio addiction and wasting time on Telegram group chat dramas. But with him around, I was motivated to live up to my own standards. 

It took a couple of months to work through our teething issues. As an owl/lark couple, our daily routines were at least 6 hours out of sync in the beginning. I felt irritable; I was used to being alone most of the day, but now here he was, everywhere I turned. 

At first we hung out together a lot. Eating, swimming, going to the gym, hanging out with family, binge-watching Veronica Mars, pub quizzes, etc. But we felt like wastoids, that sensation of going nowhere in life. We learnt that we need learning/creative projects to pursue independently, but side-by-side. This is working well. I truly enjoy our companionable afternoons at Bishan Park McDonald's, reading and writing side-by-side, taking breaks to people-watch.

6. Creative recovery

Like any other special snowflake, I wanted to start a blog this year and write about day-to-day minutiae. Because what is life if not a goldmine of potential internet content, right?

I found it extraordinarily hard. "Just write for yourself!," everyone said. But, as someone who has written for work for the past 10 years, what did my "self" like? I hadn't a clue. It was far easier to write SEO content or white papers or magazine articles than to write "for myself". Very troubling.

I started doing The Artist's Way, the 12-week creative recovery course by Julia Cameron. 

It's a pain in the ass, but worth it. For a start, you're forced to write 3 full pages every day. Basic reportage about daily activities can fill but 1 page at most, so how you choose to fill the remaining space indicates what you subconsciously pay attention to.

The course also forces you to practise pragmatic self-love. Not bullet journalling and potted plants, but truly quotidian stuff. Like not making yourself eat the cheapest sandwich at 7-11, forcing your schedule to fit others' agendas, or depriving yourself of a Singapore Writers Festival pass because you're not worth spending 30 bucks on. Basically, treating yourself like you're a more than a humanoid bottom-feeding crustacean. Which was... new. 

Has it worked? Well I'm writing this post without too much agony or regard for the "audience". So, maybe a little.

7. Bunnies & boarding

Our old foster bunny Dozy died in August this year. She was over 10 years old, which is, like, decrepit in bunny years. After, we adopted 2 bunnies, Panda and Burrito. I laugh about 500% more now, just looking at their ridiculous antics.

That was September. In November, I decided that, before they got too used to owning the house, I would start a side hustle I've always dreamed of: bunny boarding.

Renting out the spare room to bunny tenants was surprisingly easy. All it took was a Carousell listing. And it's been a blast. I learnt something huge, too: one of the bunnies got sick and I cared for it through 2 days of GI stasis. Luckily, I was pretty adept at syringe-feeding and administering meds from taking care of Dozy. He recovered. Happiest day ever.

~

I'm pretty happy with my life now. Maybe it's because I'm giving myself permission to be who I really am: a slacker who likes to sit at McDonald's reading romance novels. I feel relieved to no longer have to behave like an adult. Despite getting a year older, I feel younger.

A lot of my past career milestones have little to no import in my current life. What good has "leading a team” or “achieving xxx organic traffic” done me, really? I do fondly remember those days, but I've become aware that my efforts served my previous employers more than they served me.