At my latest networking “meeting” with my bro Alex — also known as a free lunch with a marketing executive who still has a job and a corporate card — we talked about freelance opportunities that might be coming up. We talked about who was hiring, who claimed they were hiring, and which companies were pretending that “lean teams” were somehow a point of pride instead of a warning sign.

As we were wrapping up, Alex asked about my runway.

“How much longer do you have on unemployment?” he asked, while signing the check.

“I never filed for unemployment,” I said.

Alex looked at me the way people look at you when you say you’re Team Aubrey. 

“What do you mean you never filed?”

I tried to explain it, but halfway through talking I realized how ridiculous I sounded. I had somehow turned unemployment into this mythical government charity dungeon in my mind. In my head, getting unemployment meant going to someplace with flickering fluorescent lights where desperate people sat in molded plastic chairs waiting for a number to be called.

It felt like something other people did. Not me. 

When I first wrote publicly about losing my job, I joked about “funemployment.” At the time, I still had severance money coming in, savings, and enough confidence to believe another role would appear quickly. 

And as we now know…you could end up dealing with the five stages of grief every time you see an e-mail that starts with: “Thank you for taking the time…”

I am drained and have been for quite some time. The idea of applying for…money with no attachment except that I’m entitled to it just didn’t connect. 

The truth is, I didn’t understand unemployment at all.

I didn’t know whether severance disqualified you. (It does not)

I didn’t know if high earners could even receive it. (Yes, they can.)

I didn’t know if freelancers were treated differently. (Yes, they are. But you can often still collect.) 

Most embarrassingly, I didn’t understand that unemployment insurance isn’t charity. I knew, in theory but not in practice.

Since my very first job as a teenager, employers have been paying into unemployment insurance systems tied to my labor. Decade after decade. Every paycheck. Every W-2. Every promotion. Every “exciting opportunity.” Every year-end review where someone called me “valuable to the organization” right before letting me go.

“You’ve probably generated like 30K into unemployment systems over your career,” Alex said.  “Why are you acting like you’re asking somebody for a favor?”

That was the part that snapped something into place for me. Because I realized my resistance wasn’t financial. It was psychological. I had attached filing for unemployment to failure. 

I thought filing meant I had somehow crossed into another category of person. The kind of person waiting for help instead of being the one taking the lunch meetings and giving career advice. But unemployment isn’t a character judgment. It’s literally insurance. Your labor helps fund a system that exists for moments exactly like this

No matter how much or how little I’ve paid to insure my car over the years, I’d never feel some type of way for getting the funds for a repair.

And here’s the truly humbling part: once I finally filed, the process was almost aggressively normal.

I definitely didn’t know that I could file online in under an hour. (Since the pandemic, every state in the US has online registration.) 

No endless lines.

No humiliating interviews under buzzing fluorescent lights.

No one asked me to explain how a former executive ended up unemployed in a collapsing marketing economy.

Just forms. Verification. Processing time. 

Then one morning the money showed up.

And I was genuinely shocked by both the amount and the duration.

Not because it replaced my old salary — it absolutely did not — but because I had expected something symbolic. A couple hundred dollars and a pat on the head. Instead, it was enough to materially slow the bleeding while I continued to figure out my next move.

Enough to breathe.

Enough to stop making panic decisions.

Enough to remember that after decades of work, maybe I didn’t need to feel ashamed for using a system designed specifically for workers who find themselves without work.

Maybe I can stop grieving, clear my head and treat someone else to a meal who might need it.