I had a chat with my friend Kevin Sonney today, who blogged earlier this summer about the need to establish a routine when one loses a job:
One of the things that really messes with unemployed people is the lack of a routine. Take a standard office worker – they get up, get ready, go to work, go home, have dinner, do their own thing, sleep, later rinse, repeat.
And then we’re cut adrift, our patterns are broken, and it’s easy to unhinge or lose productivity. The advice given to freelancers – and this applies to the unemployed as well – is to establish a new routine, and stick to it, until it becomes a habit. And to make it productive, before we end up spending every day playing XBox in our underwear and never leaving the house.
Kevin’s got a good point. It’s been a major adjustment for me to get used to a new routine. I’ve taken on the daytime parenting responsibilities: getting the kids to and from school and making sure they get their homework done. Kelly’s the working spouse now and that’s been a dramatic shift here at home.
I miss having work to do, though, but as Kevin says I’ve been establishing my new routine. For me, that means spending time in the morning scanning the available jobs. I’ll apply to those that look interesting, then if I get a response I’ll set up an appointment to talk with the employer. I’ve been very fortunate to have a few of these phone interviews each week: in fact, I’m booked up until Monday morning. That’s a comforting thought to me, that folks are seeing the value I can bring.
I also have my volunteer duties to keep me sane. Though they take some time, they do provide me with continuity and a familiar routine now that I can really use that. And I’m also staying busy with filling out a web project I’ve been meaning to do for some time as well as playing around with my online radio station.
And I’ve also taken this time to organize: sorting through piles of papers and dumping everything I no longer need. Just getting that done by itself has been satisfying.
I have a feeling that this may be the last week I’ll be without a job. Then I’ll have to adjust to yet another new routine, but at least I’ll be getting paid!