I’ve been unemployed for a couple of months now (got savings, so I’m OK for now). But I came from an increasingly toxic job and I was surprised how good it felt to do “nothing”...for much longer than I thought. In the past I would get bored even after 3 days of unwinding. It’s been a while and I still don’t quite feel ready to go back to work, though I have been applying aggressively. I think it was a measure of how much the last position took a toll on me, one I didn’t even realize at first. Any position I take from now on, I will investigate their work-life balance, so I don’t end up like this guy in the manga who literally needs supernatural help to merely survive.
I still maintain that this manga is as much as critique of Japanese work culture as it is a fluffy escapist romcom. The tech work culture (where I come from) is not much different, encapsulated by the Steve Jobs T-shirt “80 hours a week and loving it.”
May we all have someone to fill our hollow, overworked hearts.
