IRVINE – Jim Kennedy pushes open the roll-up door of his storage unit and there, like a curtain rising on a stage, sits the pieces of his former life.

There are his golf clubs. Stacked over there are boxes marked “pots & pans,” “misc. papers,” “glassware.” In the center sits an HDTV, one of the first on the market from several years ago. Along the left side of the unit is a ceiling-high cabinet containing Kennedy’s 375-bottle wine collection he spent a decade amassing.

The contents of Kennedy’s home have been here at Mini U Storage since Jan. 17, the day he moved from his Newport Beach condo after getting kicked out by a couple sheriff’s deputies. Kennedy, 46, lost his six-figure corporate development job 19 months ago, he fell behind on his mortgage payments and his house went into foreclosure. He filed for bankruptcy last August and it was finalized in January. To the logical Kennedy, the story is simple.

“I’m not going to claim I was cheated out of my house,” Kennedy says several times. “I didn’t pay my mortgage.”

Now the former frequent flier from his days working in IT and finance is living off those rewards – airline loyalty programs and hotel points. His clothes and everyday supplies packed into his leased BMW, the single Kennedy stays a few nights here, a few nights there, always running the numbers of how many points he will use and trying to stick to a self-imposed $5-a-day food budget.

His life is up in the air.

“I’m on hold but time keeps going. That part’s frustrating,” Kennedy said. “I should be in major-dollar earning years and I am losing major-dollar earning years, which I will not get back. That part is frustrating and a little scary.”

This week, Kennedy is at the Holiday Inn Express in San Clemente, where he converted his United Airlines miles. He brought down the 7,000-points a night cost to 5,000 by adding $100 for his four-night stay, so it costs him $25 a night. But there’s an added benefit because he can expand his food budget with the free breakfast. It’s also convenient, as he can drive up the 5 Freeway to get his mail at the Mailboxes Plus in Irvine – he has a post office box because he has no address. It’s here he gets his unemployment checks, which he and 147,000 other jobless people in Orange County are using for survival.

On Monday, Kennedy was running errands, stopping at the storage unit to grab a couple bottles of wine. Then it was off to the Mailboxes Plus where he picked up two checks from the Employment Development Department, as the state agency had fallen behind on one of his payments, along with this month’s issue of Golf World. He bounced into the next-door laundry and peeled off his dry-clean-only golf shirt from the Four Seasons Resort & Club. Next stop was the bank, where he deposited his checks, then a stop at the post office to mail his weekly claim for unemployment benefits.

“I buy stamps in onesies and twosies because I hope I don’t have to do this for onesie or twosie more weeks. I know it sounds silly, but…,” he said. “Maybe I should go the other direction and plan ahead and buy a whole 18-book and then I’ll get a job tomorrow.”

After putting $15 worth of gas in his car, Kennedy drove over to the local Ralphs, where he found a Claim Jumper frozen meal on sale for $2 and he stocked up on a gallon of bottled water because it’s cheaper than single servings. Then it was back down the 5 Freeway to the Holiday Inn Express, which has the added amenity of a microwave for his frozen dinner of beef stew. A half-eaten muffin from breakfast was stored in the refrigerator.

Kennedy’s days are like this, short bursts of errands around his search for work. Every day he visits the online job banks and tries to reach out to recruiters, but he finds himself one of several hundred folks who are all going for the same gig, and it’s a difficult slog. He’s taken his story to Twitter in hopes of setting himself apart from all the other jobseekers. He writes under a pseudonym, @HomelessThomOC.

“Greetings! I am Thomas and I have lost my house and am living out of my car. I worked in Finance and IT but haven’t had a job in 18 months,” was his first Tweet, posted on Feb. 16.

Even though his life is on hold, Kennedy is hopeful. Much like his counting of hotel points, he views his job search as a numbers game, and likens it to the sales philosophy of software giant Oracle.

“Oracle believes if you make a hundred cold calls you will get 10 people who will take a meeting and 10 meetings will get you two senior executives in which one you will make a sale,” Kennedy said. “For me it’s the same thing. The more resumes I send out, the more people I’m getting in front of, and one of those will hopefully figure out, ‘Hey this guy’s pretty bright and he’s got a pretty good background and we should pick him up and bring him in at least for an interview.'”

After a few nights in San Clemente this week, Kennedy will move down to a San Diego, where he will use some hotel points his ex-girlfriend gave him. He counts his days in small wins – getting the made-up EDD check, for instance, or receiving a call from a recruiter. He figures he’ll have enough points to last a few more months and hopes he doesn’t have to tell his 85-year-old mother, who lives in Nevada, of his unemployed status.

And always the economics major, Kennedy tries to stay logical despite the disappointments, so he sticks to a simple equation.

“I don’t have a choice. I gotta keep going because I’m kind of running against time,” he said. “I have to find a job before ‘A’ or I’m going to run out of ‘B.’ I just gotta get to the finish line.”

Contact the writer: plowe@ocregister.com or 714-796-7969.