7 (Cheap) Ways to Stay Sane During Unemployment

“What are we going to do today, Catherine?”

“Same thing we do every day, Catherine. Try to take over the workforce.”


I like to be busy, and I hate monotony. When I got laid off in December, it was easy to stay busy because Christmas and Z’s birthday were just around the corner—so many little projects and tasks awaited me, I was actually kind of glad for the forced “time off.” 

As the craziness of December becomes a distant memory, I find myself with fewer and fewer things to occupy my time. And, worse, I have no idea when I’ll earn a stable paycheck again, so spending money makes me feel sick to my stomach. I can’t just go out and spend the day in San Francisco, browse at the outlets, get a hobby (most of which are actually more expensive than you’d think), or whatever else I might do with my free time.

So what do I do? How do I keep myself from falling into a Netflix black hole?
Continue reading “7 (Cheap) Ways to Stay Sane During Unemployment”

How I Picked Myself Up After Job Loss (And Whether It Lasted)

We’ve all experienced setbacks. This is just a fact of life. It doesn’t matter how smoothly things appear to be going—something, at some point, will trip us up. How do we dust ourselves off when this happens? And, once we do, how easy is it to stay standing?

My exploration of self-kindness today is through the lens of my (not-so-recent-anymore) layoff. I had found my dream job for a really wonderful organization with a mission that I truly believed in. I was writing language arts curriculum with a social-emotional focus, and I was just beginning to feel like I was becoming competent.

Then the whole thing began to fall apart. The organization was financially unstable and they did a few rounds of layoffs. I was part of the second round. Continue reading “How I Picked Myself Up After Job Loss (And Whether It Lasted)”