 In December 2021, I found myself surprisingly unemployed one day before I went on vacation for 10 days, three days before the new year. Find out what I've done ever since then. I'm Kyla Danagno. I'm so glad that you're here watching another video and I lost my job in December 2021. Okay, it is 2022 right now so I've been unemployed the whole start of this year. So I want to talk about 15 things that you can do if you are unemployed, right? And if you have a job, you just found the title of this video exciting. You can still be inspired and learn something. Maybe make your own little list of things that you want to do, things that I had in my mind but I just didn't really have the time for and now I do have the time for and maybe this list will inspire you and get you motivated to create a little list like that yourself. As soon as I lost my job, I was shocked of course. I was really surprised and I got off the phone. I told my husband and then I quickly wrote down a list of things that I was feeling, right? I've been in therapy for the past two and a half years, maybe three years and so I knew I needed to write down when I was feeling at the time. I needed to just get it out, not sit with it and so I wrote down that list. I had therapy that night and then I went on vacation. I was on vacation. I didn't think about my job too often when I was on vacation. I have a toddler. It was her first time being on a plane, her first time being in Florida, seeing the ocean, all of this stuff so I was busy enough with all of that but then when we came back, being an employee slapped me in the face. No exaggeration because I hadn't spent any time at our house not working. My husband and I have worked from home remotely since March 2020 so for it to be 2022, we were going on two years of working remotely and it felt really weird to be at home and not looking at my laptop, checking my emails on my phone, finding out who's looking for me, finding out what I missed so when I got back home and I realized I wasn't going through the same routines, the same habits that I was doing before, it really hit me and one particular day I was really feeling bad and I was like, I've been working since I was 15 years old excluding my 1L year of law school. Who am I right now? What can I possibly do? So I wrote down this list of 15 things that I could do so before I get started I do want to say all of these things are free as long as you have either wi-fi or working cell phone because I had those things everything else on this list was free and that was really important to me because when you don't have a job, the last thing you want to do is go out and spend money so the first thing I could do well an employed play with my daughter without guilt right and I say that because as I've mentioned my husband and I are both working from home you know so we're always juggling we got two eyes on her one ear listening out for email notifications or reminders about meetings or all of this stuff so I was able to hang out with her during the day I was able to sit down and watch an episode of Sesame Street and not wonder if I was missing something because she wasn't in daycare or anything it was just us and I even found that I had more time and more patience with her during the day because I didn't know that as soon as she went to sleep I had to run and do something the number two thing that I could do was water my plants number three I could read books that I own this is a whole book show of stuff a lot of the books I've read before I would say 50 50 books that I've read or books that I bought expecting to read because they looked amazing and I haven't touched them so I could spend time reading books that I already own all right the fourth thing that I could do is exercise it's not free but it's included in rent so therefore I don't need any extra money to use it Kyla why don't you go to the gym why don't you get up and move why don't you go do something because it's here the gym is there and that's one thing that I could do so the fifth thing that I could do while being unemployed is edit podcast episodes and this one's important because I currently host a podcast called the ur lawyer podcast and I have episodes recorded for the next two and a half months that is because I am very comfortable with working ahead I prefer to work ahead but at any given time I'll have three episodes recorded and scheduled and I use open source software to edit my podcast so it's at no extra expense to myself so that is another thing I could do while unemployed so the seventh thing that I could do while unemployed is edit my resume um I was working with that company for nine months and before that I was working with a law firm for five years so I haven't needed to edit a resume in a long time and that was something that I could do while I was unemployed and tweaking my resume so that I could get another job right and so that probably should have been the first thing that I did once I was unemployed but that happened to be number seven on the list so the next thing on the list of things you can do when you're unemployed listen to audiobooks I use an app called Libby it's a free app that you can download and it is for public libraries so you enter your library card number and you can download audiobooks ebooks you know if you're busy when you're working you don't have time to listen to them sometimes for me it's better to just listen to music or something in the background a tv show that I've seen before but while unemployed I can listen to all the audiobooks this next thing organized my closet I have a lot of hair products I've been doing my hair since I was in middle school and so I have a lot of conditioners creams all the stuff and it's all over the place and whenever I go in there I just kind of tuck things on the shelf and close the door so the ninth thing on the list of things to do while unemployed is finish your blogging course I signed up for a course last fall and it's by a great writer called John Brogio and he tells you how to write blogs that work and I finished like the first module of the course then I got busy with all of these freelance blogging assignments that I had and I wasn't able to finish the course but I would learn things in the module and I would immediately start implementing them and it worked and then I was actually getting work and getting stuff picked up and I was writing all the time so I didn't actually finish the course but I know the course would be incredible so that was the number nine thing that I wrote down so I got to say here before I finished the list this is not the most exciting list but again unemployed looking for things that were valuable that I could do at my time looking for things that did not cost money and for me listening to books reading books finishing courses I already paid for I can do these things they've been in the back of my mind Kyla you know you gotta finish that but now I actually can finish them so next on the list is outline and online course this should not be a surprise if I'm taking an online course finding value in it learning how to blog blogging why wouldn't I want to create my own course so the next thing that I had on my list was outline on my course put some content out there get started what are you gonna do what can you teach the people what can you tell them that they would find valuable next on the list is write a blog so at the time I was like you know what don't make this a blog record the interviews put them out there as a podcast it'll be amazing but I do miss the writing part to it right the show notes just aren't enough and so I actually wrote down why don't you go on and start a blog write about something write about life write about what's happening and that is something that I can do for free number 12 on the list find paying freelance jobs and freelance jobs because I was doing a lot of work for free I would write for organizations for free I would create their newsletters for free I would do a lot of stuff for free because I didn't need the income I was being paid and writing is just something that I enjoy doing but I do have on my list that I should start finding paying freelancing jobs so that someone can pay me for the things that I already enjoyed doing which is writing blogging editing editing content editing written words editing all the stuff so that's another thing that can do while unemployed that is look for paying freelance jobs so the next thing on the list is clean the house I'll leave it up to you to know whether or not I've been cleaning the house but that is on the list of something that I can do for free so the 14 thing on the list for things to do while unemployed is write a book so listen I've written a 10,000 word blog article I had a nine page outline that I started with to write all of these words most novels are about 80,000 words what's another 70,000 words this is where my brain was you're unemployed you have time spend an hour a day you can have 70,000 words by the end of the year write a book this is how my brain works I'm finding this list to be quite finding myself to be quite vulnerable or reading this list because you are hearing about all the things that are interesting to me and things that immediately jumped out to me so and so the last thing on the list was perform on social media and I say perform because I'm not typically in my house wearing lipstick my hair will be done you know my room actually looks like this but to me putting on lipstick is performing and a clip of me dancing around my kitchen cooking korean spare ribs that's performing right I don't typically do that when I'm at the house and so performing on social media is a good way for me to remember that you can have online content you can have online displays but you are showing 100% of the 10% of your life that you're sharing with other people you're in my house seeing where I record seeing where I work seeing where I edit podcasts and record them with others but this is 10% of my life so you can get 100% of 10% of my life and that's how I think about social media now I do want to say while this list was not in any particular order I really was just sitting down and jotting out things that I could do of course I'm looking for a job I look for jobs every week I have been applying for unemployment I'm waiting for that to get approved and so I'm constantly looking for jobs I'm constantly applying and sending out my resume I did that before it was edited I did it once it was edited and then working on YouTube I created thumbnails for YouTube back in June 2021 I settled the idea I decided not to start and then finally I'm like Kyla you have the time you have the time to put on lipstick do your hair record for YouTube and share with the people so I would say I've probably done probably five things on my list of 17 so including the two bonuses which is record for YouTube which is what I'm doing now and looking for jobs that brings the list to 17 things that I could do for free so those were the 15 things that I am doing right now while I'm unemployed I hope that I can stop working on the list because I get a job I'm applying to jobs all the time and I know that one of them will work out for me so I hope you enjoy the list I hope you are employed and maybe you just watched the video so that you could see what was on my list maybe you were curious or if you know someone who's unemployed or if you yourself are unemployed feel free to make a list of things that you can do because you're valuable you are important and there are a ton of things that you can do that are for free or that only require your cell phone okay so thank you for watching the video this long I'll see you the next time bye