I got the call on a Wednesday. The voice on the other end was professional, slightly cheerful, delivering news that should have sent me jumping around my room. "We'd like to onboard you."

I said thank you. I said I was excited. I said all the right things.

But when I hung up, I just sat there. No overwhelming relief. Just... Wednesday, continuing to be Wednesday.

It's been seven weeks since May 22nd, 2025. Seven weeks of "we'll be in touch" emails that never came, of rejection letters that felt like paper cuts accumulating into something deeper. Seven weeks of explaining gaps in my resume, of watching my savings dwindle, of that particular kind of shame that comes with being asked "So what do you do?" at social gatherings or people asking my parents "what does your daughter do?"

I used to wake up at 5:30, move through my day with the precision of someone who knew exactly what came next. Now I wake up whenever my body decides it's done sleeping, and the days stretch out like uncharted territory.

The desperate urgency that used to wake me up at 3 AM to check job boards has settled into something quieter, more resigned. I've learned to find contentment in small things – the way afternoon light falls across my desk, the luxury of reading a book without guilt, the simple pleasure of not having to perform productivity for anyone but myself.

These seven weeks have been different. Longer mornings without alarms. Meals eaten whenever, not because my body expected them at specific hours. No evening routine to anchor me, no carefully timed calls to mom spaced through the day like bookends holding my hours together.

My parents, of course, are ecstatic. The relief in their voices palpable, as if they'd been holding their breath for seven weeks straight. "Finally, Congratulations!"They see victory where I see... continuation.

The irony isn't lost on me that the thing I'm most excited about regarding this new job is that it's remote. I get to stay home. After seven weeks of being told I need to "get back out there," what I want most is to remain exactly where I am, in this space I've carved out for myself during this brief but intense period of unemployment.

There's something sad about closing this chapter because I again need to meet someone's expectations very single day. These weeks have been hard - harder than I let most people know. But they've also been mine in a way that feels rare. No meetings, no performance reviews, and especially no meetings with this old hag named SK. Just me, figuring out who I am when I'm not defined by what I do for eight hours a day.

I think about the person I was in May 2025, so certain that identity and employment were inseparable. Now I know they're not. I know I can wake up without an alarm and still have purpose. I know I can find meaning in conversations with friends, in books that change how I see the world, in the simple act of existing without constantly justifying that existence through productivity.

The job market broke something in me, but it also revealed something I didn't know was there – a capacity for stillness, for finding peace in the spaces between what society says I should be doing and what actually feels necessary. The sweetness of doing nothing became less of a concept and more of a lived philosophy.

So yes, I got a job. It's good news. It means I can stop checking my bank account with that familiar flutter of anxiety. It means I can answer the question "What do you do?" without the complicated dance of explanation and apology. It means my parents can sleep better at night.

But mostly, it means I can stay home and slowly figure out how to be the person I've become during these long, quiet weeks of not being anyone in particular. Maybe I'll build new rhythms, gentler ones that don't require the precision of before. Maybe I'll learn to carry this newfound stillness into whatever comes next.

The victory is quieter than I expected. Maybe that's exactly what I needed.