7-Month Funemployed: A Memoir of Finding Meaning, Movement, and Self-Worth When Work Doesn't Come Back

By Steven Neo

What do you do when work doesn't come back?
When Steven Neo received his retrenchment notice in July 2025, he did what any seasoned Program Manager would do: he made a plan. He built a spreadsheet, set a schedule, and gave himself a deadline. Seven months later, he was still searching - and the person looking back at him in the mirror was someone he was only beginning to understand.

7-Month Funemployed is a raw, honest memoir of what happens after the redundancy letter arrives and the initial shock fades. Told month by month - in real time, with all the uncertainty intact - it follows one man's journey through job rejections, identity questions, AI disruption, and the slow, unexpected discovery that losing a career can open a door to something more important than a new job title. This is not a self-help book. There are no five-step frameworks or morning routines that changed everything. What you will find instead is one man sitting at his desk at home, in Singapore, watching his savings buffer tick down, navigating a shrinking job market, writing a book his wife told him to finish, and asking the question that retrenchment forces on everyone eventually: Who am I without my name card?

Inside these pages: The unfiltered emotional reality of a prolonged job search - including 146 applications, 45 rejections, and the silences in betweenHow AI is reshaping work - and what that means for professionals whose careers were built before the disruptionWhat it takes to rebuild identity when the role you held for years suddenly disappearsThe quiet courage of showing up for your family while everything else feels uncertainA story about writing a book - and what happens when that book finds its readers
For anyone who has ever been retrenched, is currently between jobs, or is watching the ground shift beneath a career they worked hard to build - this book is for you. You are not alone. And something does wait on the other side.

The companion to Steven Neo's debut memoir, 7-Day Breakup.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GZDFMC12
• ISBN13: 9798195262631
• Release Date: April 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.31 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 6.0" x 9.0"