After two weeks of being unemployed, I [finally? hopefully?] snapped out of my “Wah wah, I don’t have a job” funk. I discovered that the most upsetting part of being unemployed was when Sunday evening came. I couldn’t shake the fact that I didn’t have an office to go to the next day.
I acknowledge how emo this all sounds. I’m cringing as I type this.
Any HR consultant or job-finding person will say that finding a job—is a job. Henceforth, I’m going to make finding a job my job. I think if anyone else who’s laid off gets upset over not having a job, the best thing to do is to organize your job search as if you could only complete it during the business day.
This way, you stay occupied while all your friends are at work. And when friends ask “What did you do today?,” your first reaction isn’t to respond in deadpan that you did the same thing as you did yesterday and the same thing you will be doing tomorrow.
At least in this situation, you can say “Oh! I applied to media company XYZ! It was an awesome listing! I fit the qualifications so well that they are going to pay me tons of money from the incredible amounts of advertising revenue they are going to get because I create great content.”
See? I’m being optimistic!
This is how my daily schedule will be organized, Monday through Friday:
8:30 a.m.: Wake-up. Pull self out of bed. Make tea. Proofread cover letters, set up e-mails to go out at 9.
9:01: Send out first batch of cover letters and e-mails.
9:05: E-mail and follow up with contacts regarding informationals and application updates.
10:00-10:59: Read through MediaBistro, Shelly Palmer e-mails; check out NYT.com, RealClearEverything, Gawker. Search through Indeed, JournalismJobs.com, MediaBistro, and corporate sites for job openings.
11:00: Turn on “The View.” Put volume on superlow.
11:01: Sketch out plan for drafting and editing cover letters. Start writing, drafting, and e-mailing as needed.
Noon: Hour break.
1:00: Continue with e-mailing cover letters and resumes. If there is downtime, then it’s time to start learning programs to be more knowledgeable and marketable. I rejoined lynda.com to learn PHP first, then Flash.
(I did a very unscientific poll on Twitter on which to learn first. While Flash is more requested by employers, and easier to learn, a few argued that they don’t really use Flash. It seemed to me that PHP is more useful.)
This only gets me to about 3 p.m., so this schedule will probably change as I figure out how to be more productive. Do you have any suggestions?
