Unemployment diary: I'm a 28-year-old daily operations manager in Indiana who's been out of work since March

• The Unemployed States of America takes readers deep inside the decimated American workforce.
• LaTrell Smith is a 28-year-old daily operations manager for Victory Field Concessions in Indianapolis, Indiana.
• He lost his job at the start of the pandemic.
• At first, he saw the pandemic as an opportunity to take a few weeks off and focus on his education — but he finds himself feeling lazy and frustrated.
• This is his story, as told to Seth Story.

Going to school and working full-time when the pandemic started, I thought it would be a blessing in disguise. You know, getting a couple of weeks off while I further my education, finish my degree. But then it kept going on and on. And now I'm at the point where my sleeping schedule is messed up, I'm putting on quarantine weight, and I'm getting lazy and complacent with my day-to-day life. It's frustrating.

I go to sleep at like five or six in the morning, and I would be lucky to wake up before noon. I watch every streaming service, dabble in the stock market to hopefully make a little bit here and there, and then do odd jobs for people I know who need them.

I have to do little random jobs and freelance work — I studied visual arts — to make ends meet. Nobody is hiring. So I try to focus on improving my work and get more freelance work as the time goes on. Eventually, I'm hoping that one of those will lead to some kind of full-time work.

In the meantime, my unemployment benefits and the stock market are the only two sources of income that are consistent.

The stock market has become a resource; I've learned a lot not only about the market itself but money management as a whole. I'm trying to learn as I go, but it's not like I'm making a lot of money from it. It's literally a few dollars here and there.

It's hard for me being in sports and entertainment and seeing no end in sight. At first, like I said, I thought it would be a couple of weeks. We are going on, what, five, six months? How long will sports not have fans? No concerts for another month? Six months? A year? Every day, you hear how many cases there are or how cities and states are backtracking opening. Every delay is not only hurting me; it's hurting a lot of people. So it's scary not knowing what's next.

I just hope that we can go back to normal soon. I want to be able to go back to work with a different outlook and just enjoy the little things again.