10 Things To Do To Make the Most of Your Unemployment

As the employed optimists say, being fired or laid off is really a positive thing because it gives you a chance to rethink your career path and take advantage of all that life has to offer. Well, once you're done doing that and checking the job listings for the thousandth time here are some other ideas to get you through the day.

1.    Watch Movie Trailers on Hulu.com! Now, I know that some of you out there, like me, are really quite hard working and conscientious. You just wouldn’t feel right watching a full-length feature film, even a documentary, during the day when you should be hard at work improving the formatting on your resume for the 50^th time. Well, rest assured; watching trailers doesn’t count as watching a movie. You can stop anytime, after just one or two or three short compilations of the best moments from upcoming movies. You can’t afford to see these new works in the theater anyway so what does it matter that they are all ruined for you. Warning: Hulu.com trailers are highly addictive. Best to begin watching after 5pm so that one of your gainfully employed housemates can pull you away from the computer, with disgust in their eyes, when he or she returns home.

2.    Zumba! You may not be qualified to work but you are definitely qualified to work it out! I recommend taking a zumba class, a new type of aerobic dance class that is all the rage at institutions of physical fitness. In zumba classes, you burn calories jumping around to latin music trying to look like you are doing the samba, salsa, merengue or some potentially sexy reggaeton move. Mastering the choreography will really boost your self-esteem and even if you are a crappy dancer it is guaranteed that someone even worse, probably an elderly white man, will be in the class. And there’s the camaraderie. I mean, you’re all dancing around like idiots at 11:30 am; some of your classmates must be unemployed too!

3.    Get Revenge! Pass by the establishments where you have applied for work and curse them, even if they are doing great work like fighting poverty and educational inequality. I say who needs em’! Talk shit to all your friends. “Oh, so they are empowering low-income women and children. Well their hiring committee sucks!”

4.   Volunteer and then quit! Volunteering is a great way to give back to your community, feel useful, and connect with others, most of whom are also volunteering because they just can’t find a job. Volunteering reminds you to be greatful for what you have and that your time is valuable, even if it doesn’t have any monetary value. Another great thing about volunteering is that you can quit gigs you don’t like and reclaim that feeling of control over your life. In my search for the perfect volunteering relationship, I quit three organizations. I really felt like I was back in the driver’s seat again. Nobody was laying me off this time, I was the one doing the hiring and firing.

5.    Go for long, long walks! I prefer to call these walks “adventures.” Set yourself a high goal like walking on every street and mural-adorned alley of San Francisco’s 7 by 7 square miles. And just wait for the great feeling of accomplishment and physical exhaustion coming your way.  


6.   Become a Master Chef- So you can’t afford to go out to eat as much as before, at least not without coupons. Well, you can make your kitchen your own fancy restaurant. One of my best recent creations was a set of very tastey orange flavored sex organ cakes, one shaped like breasts, the other like a penis -or like Mickey Mouse according to some infantile critics (Don’t worry, I’m not totally nuts, it was for a friend’s engagement party).Remember Julie, from Julie and Julia, well you can by like her minus the awful burden of a job. With a vegan housemate, butter heavy recipes are reviled in my home so instead of mastering the art of French cooking I am mastering the art of soy cooking with the recipe book Veganomic. Yum!

7.    Earn and Learn! Roll coins while watching foreign movies borrowed from your local library-without the subtitles. Soon you will be able to add a foreign language fluency to your resume.

8.    Make a meal from the free samples at local grocery stores! I recommend Trader Joes, Whole Foods and farmer’s markets especially on busy days when you can get discreetly get seconds or thirds. Then there is always the bulk bin at any local store - although a manager might argue that is stealing not sampling.

9.   Give Purchasing Decisions the Time They Deserve. This is your chance to make really educated decisions about what you buy. For example, it’s a new year and you are in the market for a weekly planner. Visit all the hip local curiosity shops and check out their supply of pocket calendars. Now you don’t need something too big, because let’s be honest, you probably wont get a job in 2010 and so there wont be much at all to note down in your planner. And you need something light-weight for taking on your long walks just in case someone calls to schedule an interview. Compare prices, paper textures, artistic quality. Try to bargain with the hipster behind the counter. Make clear to them that you have time to search the whole city for a planner and this is their only chance to get your business, although in reality you could come back tomorrow and the day after to see if they are in a more generous mood.

10.   Create your own blog! But not about the joys of being unemployed, though, that’s obviously taken.