This hit home

I'm reading The Up Side of Down, which is a book about failure. (And how it can be necessary to succeed.) The author's preface starts with "When you tell people that you're writing a book about failure, most of them want to know why. For two years, I've been giving them the same answer: 'Write what you know.'"

It's a decent read from a columnist whose articles I enjoy perusing. The section on unemployment resonated, given that I went through some similar feelings during my 13-month spell on the beach in 2008. This isn't aimed at anyone; I just wanted to quote it because it hit home.

"It is very difficult to communicate the progressive corrosion of long-term unemployment to someone who has not endured it. If you have been through it, you never forget it; but until you have, you will have difficulty imagining the strain. Like most unemployed people, I found myself withdrawing from social relationships as time wore on. It wasn't just that I didn't have the money to go out (which I didn't); the bigger problem was that I found it increasingly painful to hang out with people who had jobs."