THE REALITY OF CHOOSING TO (TEMPORARILY) BE UNEMPLOYED

I'm now 6 weeks into unemployment and honestly, it’s wonderful. I've reached a stage in life where this felt impossible, I'm no longer in my late teens/early twenties chasing a gap year. At 32 years old, societal expectations are thatI should be a homeowner, working a solid and stable job, potentially with a child or 2, and married. As it turns out, I don’t own my own home (yet), my job was becoming rather unstable, I’m still single and I’m childless.

If there's one thing to know about me, I may still have no idea what career I want, no major goals other than happiness, but I’ve always been a hard worker and a grafter. When my job became less of a sure thing, I took the opportunity that presented itself to remove myself from the situation and start a life that I really wanted. It’s no secret that the last 14 months of my life have been pretty rough, never in my life would I have taken a work break had it not been for the stress of that past year and the financial security I currently have. It feels frivolous and something that people don’t really do. Which is precisely why I jumped at this opportunity.

So far, I’ve slept more (big bonus for me), I’ve had much more time to create content and write, Sunday scaries or working weekends don’t exist for me and I can make weekend plans without feeling like I’m using up the small of amount of free time I have within the week. To be honest, work was draining me, free time felt non-existent despite only work 37.5 hours per week, and having free time now feels crazy to me. Making plans, doing things at the drop of a hat and actually having slower days to enjoy the things I really love has been amazing.

I've had time to read, like actually sit down and read chunks of books. At the last minute I was able to attend a Man City meet and greet with some of the players, attend a team's open training session, all things I would never have been able to do if working. These are the things I want to use my time doing, not missing out.

The first 6 weeks have felt pretty marvellous. For the most part.

As a notorious over-thinker, to the point of frustration sometimes, I thought out every scenario before making the decision to take a 6 month break. The one thing I hadn’t considered was the lack of structure in my weekly life. It seems so simple now when I look back, and perhaps I did briefly consider it and felt it was minor, but really it’s a very real point when considering the unemployed life. I struggle with motivation at the best of times, but on the non-so-good days, it can be really difficult. 

As much I’ve thoroughly enjoyed waking up and thinking ‘what should I do today?’, I’ve struggled to keep motivated to actually do something, I’m finding I need a plan to attempt to keep me on track. Quite often I’ve found myself putting off a task thinking ‘I can just do that tomorrow or next week instead’, whilst it’s true, it’s not the best or healthiest mindset to be in, and it's gonna make time rapidly decrease without much achievement.

Things I’m trying to implement to make this period run smoother;

Make a weekly plan of what I’d like to do and plot it in my calendar, day by day

This way I'll be less likely to wake up later, have a really slow morning and then decide at lunch time what I want to do. It’s a nice idea doing that but trust me it’s get boring and makes you feel wasteful of your day.

Make at least one plan with a friend for the week, this gives structure to at least one of my days so I can plan around it

i.e, meeting my best friend for a coffee and work day. If I plan for the gym in the morning followed by our work day, it ties 2 plans into one day and frees up another day where I don't have to factor in the gym.

Get a holiday or two booked in

A large part of my time off was to travel - whether it’s a few weeks away at a time, frequent weekends away or even a handful of extreme day trips, I want to visit a bunch of new (and familiar) places and make the most of not having to plan around work and general life plans (other than the football season - trust me that makes it difficult).

Have a day set aside for general life admin and another for content creation

Normal life is still happening, I’m looking to have one day set aside each week to do life admin, clean the flat, do food shopping and the general life-y bits. This way none of these tasks will encroach on the rest of the week and means they will actually get done.

I’m also looking to have a solid day of content creation. At the moment I’ve been dipping into it almost daily, a coffee shop and an hour one day, the same the next day. I’m not getting into the proper flow of writing, shooting, editing, planning etc, one solid day to work on it like a working day means I can be far more productive when doing it and not eating up portions of each day when I could be doing something else.

Who knows what the next 5 months will look like, I do plan to revisit this in a few months time with what I’ve learned, what I’ve achieved, and how I’ve managed to navigate the unknown. Wish me luck!

S xo