Being Unemployed in What's Happening

I was laid off from work a couple months ago when the plant I was working at closed down.

This experience has really changed my perspective a lot on people who are unemployed. If you’re single like me and have no kids - a job is going to be mostly what you structure you life around. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the most important thing in your life, but most of the things you do will be structured around your work schedule.

My first week of being unemployed I was still waking up around the same time I would as if I was going to work and I was doing pretty good at planning activities for the day. The only problem I was running into was that a lot of the ideas that I had planned required spending money. Whether it is a house project, kayaking trip or even just simply spending time on the beach, being productive and having fun is generally going to cost at least a little bit of money.

In attempt to save money I found that I stopped planning activities and with no real reason to wake up early in the morning my sleep schedule has changed for the worst. I’ve started heading in a downward spiral of what I guess you can call: Laziness. I know if I spent some time I could come up with some sort of regimen that would give my unemployed life a little bit of structure while staying on budget, but it’s hard to commit time to that when the actual goal is to NOT be unemployed for long.

Fortunately for me I have a really good job lined up which I will be starting next week. This should get me out of my rut very quickly, but in a way I’m grateful for this experience. It’s forced me to think about what I need in life to really be motivated. It has also made me change the way I think about people who are unemployed and don’t seem to be doing much with their free time.