So I have recently become a vic­tim of the cur­rent eco­nomic down­turn. I don’t like to use the word vic­tim because no one is really a vic­tim. We should all be work­ing towards mak­ing our­selves indis­pens­able at our places of work. But some­times it can’t be helped. If a com­pany doesn’t have money, it doesn’t have money. And although it’s not good to blame your­self and wal­low in guilt, this would be an appro­pri­ate time to reassess your­self, your skills, and your cur­rent direc­tion in life. Take a moment to ignore the impend­ing bar­rage of bills that are about to start falling on your head and think hard about whether you need a course adjust­ment in where the hell you’re steer­ing your life.  Based on that, I have come up with 8 sim­ple steps to stay­ing sane, stay­ing pro­duc­tive, and prop­erly nav­i­gat­ing unemployment.

1. Find a sup­port system

No one is an island. It’s true. Find some­one you trust: a friend, a sig­nif­i­cant other, fam­ily. Some­one to share the bur­den of this stress­ful sit­u­a­tion. If you’ve done every­thing you can but still can’t find some­one, maybe you have big­ger prob­lems than unem­ploy­ment and the real rea­son you got fired was due to you per­son­al­ity and not the econ­omy. But this isn’t a post about how to find friends and even the friend­less need to sur­vive. So I sug­gest to those peo­ple, get a dog. We all need inter­ac­tion to help alle­vi­ate the stress. Hell, get a ger­bil or a cat for that mat­ter. The point is, don’t deal with this alone.

2. Stick to a reg­i­mented schedule

No going to bed at 4am and wak­ing up at 1pm. You’re out of col­lege and you need to feel pro­duc­tive. Oth­er­wise, you’re just going to enter a down­ward spi­ral of self loathing and depres­sion. You should already be use to wak­ing up at a cer­tain time for work, don’t change your sched­ule. Go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time that you would have were you still employed. Not only will it give you a sense of nor­malcy, but you’ll also feel a lit­tle more pro­duc­tive. I have also com­mit­ted myself to tak­ing my lunch hour at the same time that I did when I was at work. In addi­tion, I have sched­uled out my day with spe­cific tasks to help me accom­plish the goals I defined and out­lined in Step 5.

3. Do some­thing physical

You need to stay healthy. As much as peo­ple hate to say it, a youth­ful appearence plays a big role in whether you will get hired. A seden­tary lifestyle for even a few weeks can play havoc on your appear­ance. Your skin color and tone, your pos­ture, your over­all appear­ance. There’s noth­ing bet­ter to help you look younger than some good old fash­ioned exer­cise. I’m per­son­ally going to med­i­tate each morn­ing for 10 min­utes right after I wake up and then go for a swim. In addi­tion, I meet three times a week with my friends at the gym. This also con­tribute to Step 1, inter­ac­tion with friends. And even though this might be more exer­cise than you’ve ever had, hey, what else are you gonna do with all your free time. Might as well get healthy.

4. Tighten your belt

You have no more income. Stop spend­ing money! Com­mon sense right? You’re not the United States Gov­ern­ment after all. Start look­ing for places that you can cut cor­ners. In addi­tion to not going out to din­ner as much, get cre­ative about it. The lease on my Mer­cedes is up in a few months. I’m going to see if I can return it early with­out penalty and get rid of my car pay­ment. I can drive my mom’s jalopy around for a few months until I get back on my feet. I also turned an extra room in my house into my office. Although I hate to give it up, the cur­rent hous­ing sit­u­a­tion should make it fairly easy to rent out.

5. Keep busy and stay productive

For God’s sake, keep busy. Day­time tele­vi­sion is for old peo­ple and house­wives, not the down­sized. Find a pur­pose. Make daily tasks and weekly objec­tives. In addi­tion to your resume build­ing and job search­ing, you need to find some­thing to fill the rest of the daily void. Read that book you’ve never had the time to read. Learn a new lan­guage. Learn a new skill. Build your­self a web­site. Start a project.

I have a laun­dry list of things that I haven’t had enough time to do and now I’m tak­ing advan­tage of the free time by stay­ing pro­duc­tive. I have a doc­u­men­tary that I’ve been putting together on my off time that I can now focus on. I have a few screen­play ideas that I’m plan­ning on mov­ing to stage two. I also have a few tele­vi­sion ideas that I have been mean­ing write treat­ments for so that I can pitch. I’m also been mean­ing to pol­ish up my reel and build by busi­ness web­site. The great part is that all of these goals will help me out of the hole that is unemployment.

6. Get outside

It is very easy to stay in your paja­mas and just loaf around the house. But if you do too much of that, I starts to bleed into your pro­duc­tive­ness. Going to apply for jobs on the inter­net? Go to a library or a cof­fee shop with inter­net. Read­ing the Clas­si­fieds? Do it some­where pub­lic. In addi­tion to feel­ing like a part of soci­ety, the change of scenery will do you good. Vit­a­min D from the sun has been proven to fight depression.

7. Be hum­ble and believe in yourself.

Be hum­ble with your­self and you won’t take some of the sac­ri­fices you’ll be mak­ing as hard. Although you need a cer­tain amount of con­fi­dence to sur­vive in today’s world, don’t think of your­self as invin­ci­ble. Sh#t hap­pens to the best of peo­ple. If you stop think­ing about your­self as Super­man, you might have a chance to for­give the sit­u­a­tion, get over your­self, and move for­ward. You’re going to have to make some choices that you think are beneath you and being hum­ble will help you swal­low that pill called pride. I was for­tu­nate to just be cut to part time, but if I had been fired out­right, it would have been hard to not take it per­sonal. But you just have to believe that your self worth isn’t depen­dent on how oth­ers per­ceive you. You can never know the exten­u­at­ing cir­cum­stances that moti­vated which depart­ment got cut. For all you know, Joe Schmoe over in receiv­ing might be the nephew of the long lost sis­ter of the boss.

I’ve been pretty pub­lic with my down­siz­ing. I unabashedly broad­casted my job sta­tus on Face­book. And I’ve twit­tered it as well as writ­ten about it here on my blog. Sure there’s peo­ple out there that I’d rather not know, then again maybe there’s peo­ple our there that might have a job for me. I believe enough in myself to know that my friends won’t judge me based on my cur­rent employ­ment sit­u­a­tion. And if they do and con­tact me less, then bet­ter for me. Who needs friends like that.  I also have enough belief in myself that this is only a tem­po­rary sit­u­a­tion. This is some­thing that I will be able to look back upon as a minor hic­cup in the long road that is my career to suc­cess. And how we han­dle our­selves in the tough­est of times is the true marker of what kind of per­son we really are.

8. Get a new job

Get a new job dumb dumb. Use your new found free time to take stock of your skills, pol­ish up your resumen, renew acquain­tances, and hit the pave­ment hard. After all, you can’t stay job­less forever.