We are the newly unemployed.

We are senior executives who have never been without work since graduating college, who have meticulously scaled the corporate ladder for 10-plus years, who once detoured into the frenzied 18-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week dot.com start-up whirlwind and bathed ourselves in stock options with an idealistic vision to create and own an idea that had never been created or owned before (and for the parties), then scurried back into the cozy corporate 401(k) culture when investors closed their checkbooks and the stock options became meaningless memories in employee agreements.

Now, we are networking and sifting through Rolodexes and archived e-mail addresses at an embarrassing rate, eating casual lunches with old bosses, smiling through informational interviews with distantly prospective employers, meeting with multiple headhunters, and refining and editing and re-working and revising our r\ufffdsum\ufffds to the point that we cannot start a sentence at a party without an active verb. We have researched industry associations, taken nonpaying consulting jobs, logged our r\ufffdsum\ufffds onto every conceivable Internet job search site, lined up our references, written dashing cover letters and penned effusive follow-up notes within hours of interviews.

We have hounded outplacement consultants, skimmed through multiple articles on How to find-the-right-job-write-dynamite-r\ufffdsum\ufffds-create-your-own-niche-etc. that regurgitate the same four futile themes, and learned a new phrase for being unemployed -- "on hiatus."

We have chewed through severance packages and all but resigned ourselves to taking pay cuts once/if we ever stop hearing the refrain, "We're in a hiring freeze at least until the next quarter."

We log online or start dialing for jobs at 8 a.m. and at least three days a week scream at our sleeping pets, "Why won't anyone hire me?" We hear horror stories of friends of friends whose old boss has been looking for work for the last 18 months and choke back screams of terror at the looming prospect of becoming that friend of a friend's old boss.

We are also more physically fit because we no longer have any excuse not to go to the gym at least three times a week. And, we take more pride in our meals because our workplace coffee breaks have been replaced by a commitment to finally leaf through those abandoned cookbooks and stuff the take-out menus into the kitchen drawer. Our pets are also unintentional beneficiaries of our unemployment malaise because one-hour staff meetings have now been replaced by six carefully choreographed 10-minute daily petting sessions.

We have also become a bit more politically astute because the CNN news bar is always silently scrolling along the TV nearby. We know where Liberia is, the details of the latest health care reform bill floating through the House and Senate, and grimace at the increasing likelihood that our president knowingly misled us into a war against Iraq that now seems without end.

We anxiously await the latest unemployment figures and howl, "How long can this continue!" when they rise yet again. We understand such formerly arcane concepts as deflation and pretend that the Federal Reserve's decision to drop interest rates another quarter percent has some daily relevance as we write rent checks for overpriced apartments.

As these unemployment figures climb, we suddenly realize that the already cannibalistic competition for a dwindling number of jobs has intensified, and simultaneously fret over the prospect of being further exploited by employers who understand they can offer thinner paychecks to a bloated and desperate talent pool that runs anywhere from six to 60 deep for a single job slot.

We balance our checkbooks with an almost manic ardor, and now we pause before tossing out the coupons that slide across the floor when we open the Sunday paper and moan, "Will it actually come to that?" We vacuum daily and dust monthly instead of annually, and we recently cleaned underneath the kitchen sink. We brew our own coffee now, and break down to go to the dry cleaners only if the stain is noticeable from five paces away.

Men toy with the idea of growing goatees, but most ultimately surrender to conformity, driven by an irrational fear of being discriminated against by an anti-chin-hair human resources director they might meet at some party somewhere. Desperation and frustration can breed paranoia.

We have lowered our lottery entry barrier by several million, and we fastidiously complete the Publishers Clearing House application instead of automatically dropping it into the garbage (and debate whether our odds of claiming the top prize will improve if we purchase a magazine subscription).

More than once we have proclaimed, "The hell with it. Let's sell everything, move to Bermuda and sell scooters." Then we realize we know nothing about the Bermuda scooter market, how many scooter sellers operate there now, what their profit margins are, how intense the competitive climate is, what our exclusive points of difference would be, what assistance we could secure from the Bermuda Chamber of Commerce and concede that a half-baked Bermuda venture would only leave us in Bermuda with little money and a heavier load of debt.

We have become excellent filers, and our desks are admirably organized. We read in the middle of the day instead of only on the bus or before fading into sleep because we now have time. We have the time we always complained we needed. Now there is just too much of it.

Kehoe is a freelance writer who lives in New York City. After being unemployed for 14 months, he recently started a public relations consulting business.