Staying focused after unemployment

[LesDave]

The next few months is going to be test to see if I can hold the previous bad anxiety at bay. Our project ended last week and while I had a lot of interviews, nothing eventuated. I am fully expecting nothing much to come up until February in my field. This time of year everything goes quiet. I plan to:

1. take a break

2. only apply for jobs I think I really want for the next few months

3. live cheaply

4. stay in the present moment

Any other tips you folks have will be greatly appreciated.

[romantic_thi3f]

Hi LesDave,

Thank you for your post - this sounds like a really good plan and it seems like you are quite optimistic and positive about how you will manage your time until next year.

The other things that I can think of are to have routines (I know they can go haywire) and regular self care (like exercise, hobbies and eating well). That way these skills can roll-over when you do start work again.

The other option is to do some learning in the industry that you want to work. That could be free online courses, podcasts or books - I'm out of work at the moment and I know that I feel much more competent having these extra skills. Of course, you may find that you would much rather prefer to have a break and that's fine too.

Best of luck and I hope that you find a good job soon.

RT

[Here_I_am]

Hi LesDave,

One thing I wish I did was maintain connections with friends!!!

I went through a particularly odd period of disappointment with life and the world in general a few years back (what I would now recognise as significant depression, but back then I did nothing about it), and I terminated or let go of pretty much all of my social connections. Nowadays, outside of my wife and children and my work colleagues, I have no close connections in my life. Plenty of acquaintances (I can barely walk through a shopping centre without five people stopping to say 'Hi'), but I have maybe just now (four years or so down the track) started to build some genuine connections with people again.

It's made for a very lonely and confusing journey through my anxiety experience. Whilst I don't know what friends could have done to help, it was a sobering aspect of my life to realise I am in my forties with very few people in my life that I can turn to, even for a coffee and a chat. I value the benefit of social connection; more so because it was/is absent from my life when I need it the most.

Hope to hear more from you.