Okay, so there isn’t an actual unemployment line anymore. Between the advent of the internet and COVID-19, the process of groveling for federal handouts has been transformed into a no-nonsense, virtual experience: you go online, fill out forms, explain your hardship, click buttons, and wait. No need to encounter a surly clerk or hang around outside a shabby inner-city office building with a bunch of fellow hobos.

Filing for unemployment is, in fact, crazy easy compared to the actual process of finding another job. Hunting for your next place of employment with the no-paycheck vultures circling overhead and shouts of “Get off your lazy rear end and find a job, you lousy bum!” echoing in your mind creates a less than ideal environment in which to conduct your search. If it has been a while since you’ve found yourself in this situation, or you’ve never had to go through it, stop reading right now, get on your knees and give thanks to God, the Keto Diet, Starbucks, the payroll department at your place of work - whoever/whatever you tend to worship.

Job hunting is not easy or fun. It tends to follow this pattern:

Step 1. Engage in full-blown linear panic, followed by a frantic, compulsive, meticulous, ongoing search of the internet.

Literally moments after being eliminated and deemed non-essential by your former employer, as your self-confidence swells accordingly, you efficiently set up alerts on all of the major online job boards. This immediately boosts your incoming email by 804%. With this onslaught of notifications comes a furious roller coaster of emotions - a pendulum swinging wildly from giddy hope to bone-crushing despair - as you discover the various shortcomings of job alerts. It seems they are not always on target or in line with your search criteria.

(Scroll, scroll...) This is THE job...! Finally! Except... It requires you to purchase a franchise license. Shoot. (Scroll, scroll...) Oh, wait... This one! I could do it! Except... ‘Must have a doctorate in Puppetry...’ Crap! (Scroll, scroll...) Here it is! Yes! No... You have to have a top secret clearance and it’s an unpaid internship. Rats! (Scroll, scroll...) Hey, check out that one! It’s perfect! Just what I’m looking for! And wow... the pay! This is it! This is the one! Woo-hoo! Hold on...Hold on... It’s in Beijing and requires fluent Mandarin. Dang it! (Scroll, scroll...)

Step 2. Glom onto anything and everything that you might possibly, maybe, in a stretch, with the same odds as winning Powerball, actually land.

As the cascading avalanche of job openings continues, a host of possibilities is laboriously sluiced out of the muck like little flakes of gold (or is that pyrite?), and after verifying that the employer is looking for English language speakers living in the Western Hemisphere, the real application process begins.

Step 3. Revise your resume, ensuring it’s factually accurate and/or believable.

You have to update your resume - again and again. The goal here is to make your career sound like you’re a legitimate rockstar in the XYZ field - without including a host of obvious, bald-faced lies. This is no easy task (unless you happen to be an accomplished fiction writer). When the resume fabrications and exaggerations have all been camouflaged... I mean removed and replaced with authentic facts, it’s time to move on to step 4.

Step 4. Write a clever, attention-getting, kick-ass cover letter.

The key to a successful cover letter is to fawn and gush over the organization your applying to, regurgitate the language used in the job description, and literally pound into the hiring manager’s retinas the fact that you are so freaking excited about working at XYZ company that you are about to explode. Here you’ll need to consult a thesaurus to avoid using terms like passionate, nitroglycerin, detail-oriented, C-4, self-motivated, and nuclear more than 15 times each.

Step 5. Endure the dreaded online form.

Once you’ve got that cover letter, it’s on to the long (l-o-n-g) form many employers have you fill out online. It involves retyping all of the tedious lies... I mean details from your resume. It will make you want to beat your head against a cinder block. But don’t. This is a test to see how much you REALLY want this job. And you do want this job! Probably.

Step 6. Go fishing.

The reward for all of this intense, energy-sapping effort is a long, horrible silence as you wait to see if and when the HR department will respond. It’s exactly like fishing. You hike to a peaceful spot in the great outdoors next to a beautiful creek flowing with cold, clear water, bait your hook, cast your line, and sit there drinking beer until it’s time to go home. The only difference is that, in this case, the beautiful spot is your spare bedroom, there is no water or great outdoors. Just beer.

The fish, it turns out, are also in short supply. And when it comes to job seeking, they can be cold-blooded, scaly jerks. Many of them never even show up at the creek that is your spare bedroom. They ghost you! After all that work trying to convince them you are a bona fide genius - basically the blond reincarnation of Steve Jobs - and are frothing at the mouth for the opportunity to grind out an 8-5 existence in one of their lovely cubicles for the rest of your life, or at least until a better job comes along, they respond with: crickets!

Step 7. Keep sifting, wading, and trudging.

But you don’t have time to sit around feeling sorry for yourself, raining down curses on company XYZ. No. You continue to sift the flotsam and jetsam of Indeed, wade through the debris on LinkedIn, trudge through the listings on ZipRecruiter, eyes peeled for that perfect job. Or even a less than perfect job. As time passes, you decide to settle for a crappy job if it at least has a paycheck attached to it. You’re even willing to learn Mandarin. You also start applying for positions you know you can’t get in this lousy, virus-impaired economy disaster zone without an act of God rivaling the Second Coming.

Step 8. Start praying Hail Mary prayers.

This is where prayer comes into the picture. You begin praying for any and all divine and/or angelic assistance that might be available. You imagine your application arriving on the computer screen of some kindhearted, blind-in-one-eye, grandmotherly HR administrator, having her miraculously take pity on you, pluck your application from the slush pile, gasp at the value you are offering their company (“OMG! This guy is basically Steve Jobs, except not as smart or successful! And he’s blond!”), and immediately emailing you an offer of employment. Your Hail Mary prayer goes something like this: “Pleeez, God, let One-Eyed Gramma Sophie, the unofficial patron saint of unemployed schnooks, be the one who gets this application! Pleez, pleez, pleez...!”

The entire job hunt creates a Twilight Zone-worthy time warp in which the clock and calendar cease to function properly.

At this point, you’ve arrived at the stage I like to call “Desperation Station.” It is comically pathetic and lasts for approximately 7543 years - or at least, it feels like that because the entire job hunt creates a Twilight Zone-worthy time warp in which the clock and calendar cease to function properly. They decide to move forward very slowly. Or as Justin Bieber would say, “De...spa...cito.” Muy despacito!

Once you’ve reached Desperation Station, there are only three things keeping you from leaping off a cliff. First, there are no cliffs readily available for leaping (this is key). Second, there’s still a chance - although only a fiberoptically thin one - of finding employment before you have to start challenging the dogs for their kibble. Third, you have a blog to finish and it’s Tuesday after a long weekend and... Hey, one of the fish might contact you. Today! Gramma Sophie could be emailing right this moment! It could happen! Anything is possible!

Right? Right?!

Next time: When the Interview Requests Start Rolling in Like a Set at Waimea Bay (cue “Aloha O’e”)