Making Up A Schedule (or What To Do With My New Free Time)

Now that unemployment has officially hit me, I’ve been learning how to schedule my life again.  I’ve been so used to scheduling around a work schedule for so long, that it’s been nice to actually have more than a few hours a day to do all the things I need to do.

Some of my chores I’m going to keep on my usual schedule. There’s no need to screw with what day I do laundry, water plants, or do major house cleaning (as those are once a week things).

But now, I’m adding in a new type of meal planning (where I actually can make things for all 3 meals instead of 1). I’m also trying to schedule my free time. I don’t want to turn into someone who is lazy on the couch all the time. I did a lot of that last week when I still had a few shifts left. I watched all 3 seasons of “Veronica Mars”. But I can’t do that anymore.

I’m trying to build a schedule that allows me to have fun while I’m not working but also work hard on finding a new job. When the unemployment breaks were just temporary breaks, I’ll admit that I didn’t work that hard at finding a new job. I knew I had one to go back to so I could be picky. And I was probably way too picky.

I’m still going to be picky as far as finding a job that pays a certain amount or has flexibility, but I can’t just pick jobs that I would want to take. I have to look at the undesirable ones too.

In the past, I spent a majority of my day looking for work. That is a way to get burnt out quickly. So I’ve built a schedule where I spent 1 hour in the morning looking for work and another hour looking in the afternoon (just before the close of business for most jobs). That way, my time is structured but I’m also allowing for some fun free time.

So far, I haven’t found anything right. And the jobs that looked right for me turned out to not be what they said. For example, I applied for a job that was supposed to pay $15 an hour, but when they emailed me back to schedule an interview, they said it was actually an unpaid job but the value of what I would learn was worth $15 an hour. I need a job that pays money to pay the bills, not something that has perceived value.

If any of you blog readers know of any decently paying jobs that are flexible for actors (no MLMs please), please feel free to let me know in the comments. While I’m enjoying this time off for now, I know that the sooner I’m back at a job the better.

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