Unemployment rocks. I've done quite a bit of it over the years. Americans (and probably a lot of other people around the world) have internalized this utterly

Unemployment rocks. I've done quite a bit of it over the years. Americans (and probably a lot of other people around the world) have internalized this utterly BS "you are your work" ethos that causes them to actually feel guilty when not making money. The widely-believed, though not always stated, societal value judgment is that if you're not useful enough for others to pay you money, you're not valuable. If you're not willing to trade life-hours for money, you're lazy and therefore not valuable. The only escape from this judgment is to do socially accepted "wow that's so cool I wish I could do that" things like travel or taking extended ski trips or spending weeks climbing mountains. The key is, you should be expending considerable money and/or effort doing this things in order for your lack of money-making initiative to be excusable for any extended length of time. Thoreau spent much of his life not working, but "sauntering" in the woods, studying and enjoying nature. He would be excoriated as a worthless loafer in today's America, and that only shows how far we've fallen, in my opinion, in our vision of what a life should be like. When people ask me, as they frequently do, what I've "been doing" (meaning, what work) I frequently respond "hanging out". Out of embarrassing weakness I sometimes add "and traveling", knowing that I'm being judged and that traveling is a semi-acceptable excuse for a lack of effort to turn the hours of my life into money. Articles like this help to lessen that weakness.