I'm hitting 2 years of unemployment in a month. Its somewhat intentional, the day after I became unemployed (I quit) I started to learn Elixir and began work on building a MMO-type game (this was unplanned). Why? Because I like distributed systems programming. I didn't expect to still be working on it 2 years later. Honestly there was no plan or expectation. I got sucked into this project and it was better than having to look for a job. Its fulfilling and intellectually stimulating. The game has public playtests and I have some interested players.

But now I'm hitting 2 years and the money is starting to dry up so I need to find work again. I always thought working on this type of project would be a win-win for finding work again, but it hasn't helped much. It may even be a hinderance. Employers/Recruiters don't take it seriously or see it as some exotic work experience. I try to tell them - Distributed Systems...the concepts are the same wherever you go. No dice. I'm on the younger side and have 3 years of professional experience at a payments startup doing backend + devops + AWS. Sometimes I wonder if I screwed myself out of the job market. I'm seen as a Junior Dev with a 2 year work experience gap.

I cope by staying in shape. I have a good routine and I even got into swimming over the past year! I think if it wasn't for these activities I would've fell into despair some time ago.