{"id":770,"date":"2026-06-29T18:36:25","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T22:36:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fazigu.org\/blog\/?p=770"},"modified":"2026-07-19T12:04:22","modified_gmt":"2026-07-19T16:04:22","slug":"soy-un-perdedor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fazigu.org\/blog\/2026\/06\/29\/soy-un-perdedor\/","title":{"rendered":"Soy un perdedor"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In October 2024, I got a message on Slack from our HR gal asking if I could join a chat with her and one of my managers. Yeah, of course, I’m actually doing real work right now, so what could be wrong? Then we get in there, and it’s solemn, and it’s a situation where you know you can forget about what you’re working on and take the rest of your life off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I received a two-month severance, which, unlike the fictional Severance, didn’t benefit me prime very much. Probably because I took it as a happy-go-lucky two month vacation instead of immediately tapping into connections and getting interviews. The chatbots and coding agents were in their infancy when I was with Synacor. If I had access then to what I had now, I would have rewrote their entire system. Trivially. I should have put more effort into them keeping me, or got right back into the employment pool, but I didn’t. I played Fallout 76 for two months (separate post for that game), then went on the dole and started looking for jobs in a vastly changed landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now it’s been a year and a half since I’ve been out of work. New York State unemployment doesn’t go past six months, then you’re done until you work again. I don’t even actively look for jobs anymore. I apply when they come up in a LinkedIn update or message, or news from old friends earnestly promising a salary any time now as soon as the words are spoken and the dicks are sucked. But I’m not actively looking. I’m resigned to this life until something else comes along.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m a househusband.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I put it on my resume to explain the time since I’ve been laid off. Of course, I include my home projects, like Logodal<\/a>.and my general continuing work with Kubernetes, with an emphasis on getting a twinned producti0n system running on a cablemodem account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, to reiterate, I am a househusband. My primary job is keeping my woman (yes, the same woman as before but better mentally) happy. And, while you can’t make anyone but yourself happy, I strive to remove as many complications from her life as I’m able. I clean the kitchen and bathrooms, dust, hoover, mop when needed, I take care of the household bills (with her money), handle calls for refunds and customer service issues, make appointments, and pick up prescriptions on her behalf. I make bread and pepperoni rolls from scratch, prepare our meals, and make fresh ground and brewed coffee and a sandwich for lunch every morning.to bring home our bacon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why should I feel at all ashamed for living on the paycheck of my forever person? My ex-wife did it with me, without any of the adoring love and affection. Not that I get all I want of that now, but at least I know she loves me and appreciates me. If being a “work-at-home” househusband is bad, then why are housewives perfectly OK? Because society still thinks men should be the bread winners, not the bread makers. Women’s roles have been redefined, but not men’s. If we’re unemployed, we’re UN-something. We’re not<\/em> doing something we should<\/em> be. Dying for eight hours a day to make the money we all need to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I did that for a long time. I supported my ex-wife for years when she just couldn’t work because of mental health issues. Can’t I get some credit for that? Apparently fucking not. Apparently it doesn’t matter if the husband is unemployed. They don’t do these things by means, but by equations carefully designed to fuck over the person who supported the family before the other person decided their sustenance wasn’t worth their privation, and that’s cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m content with the situation. It’s perfect…for me<\/em>. I keep things clean and orderly within our household, and she toils without to make the money. I get a certain amount that covers our rent and utilities and subscriptions, plus half the child support I’m supposed to be paying. Yes, that’s right, my current woman is paying my ex-wife child support. There’s some shame about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Someone thinks I’m a loser? OK, that makes sense in the game frame of America’s working class and above, but I’m not playing. If I’m not playing, I can be neither a winner nor a loser, unless you define that as a lack of wins, in which case I am indeed an absolute loser.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In any case, I’m chill. One day at a time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In October 2024, I got a message on Slack from our HR gal asking if I could join a chat with her and one of my managers. Yeah, of course, I’m actually doing real work right now, so what could be wrong? Then we get in there, and it’s solemn, and it’s a situation where you know you can forget about what you’re working on and take the rest of your life off. I received a two-month severance, which, unlike...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[96,31,47],"class_list":["post-770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-me","tag-househusbandry","tag-separation","tag-unemployment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fazigu.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fazigu.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fazigu.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fazigu.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fazigu.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=770"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/fazigu.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":780,"href":"https:\/\/fazigu.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770\/revisions\/780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fazigu.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fazigu.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fazigu.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}