It is very, very hard work to be unemployed.
It isn't so much what you are going to do with your time in as much as how you are going to prioritize the time you have. There are some pitfalls in coming out of a 40+ hours a week job directly to unemployment. And, while I was mentally prepared (as much as I could) for the inevitable lay-off the wide open schedule was (and continues to be) daunting to say the least.
At first it is easy to layout a grand master plan for personal domination. Get out the guitar and relearn how to play, right more, exercise more, enter into any number of self improvement projects and programs to make yourself a better person. There is this need to not waste any time, any time at all, and to drive forward with passion and energy and maintain the rigid schedule that was in place while you were working. I am afraid it isn't so easy.
For some, who are naturally disciplined and focused, creating a schedule and maintaining an action plan might be easy and their well recorded steps for success and achievement make the unemployed hoards around them feel low, worthless, and pathetic. I can assure you that people like that are in the decline and the majority of your fellow unemployed (in my area as many as 1 in 10 not so long ago) are flailing about just as wildly as you are. There is an initial knee jerk reaction to losing your job that finds people scrambling to navigate unemployment insurance, intently revising resumes, filling out applications, and seeking career counselling and advice from what ever parties are available to them. I remember feeling this sense of hope and purpose that the period of unemployment was available in which to redefine the career path I was on and seek out an occupation that full filled my artistic tendencies and personal goals. I have found it isn't so easy.
I am a hardworking, dedicated, professional carpenter (or I was before getting laid-off) and I thought, going into yet another lay-off I would be able to keep my schedule and focus together and build on the down time. I looked forward to time with my boys and wife and initially treated the spare time as an serendipitous vacation of sorts. Initially, I was successful. A small side project brought in some extra cash and the down time was spent mt. biking, with family, and working on my resume, all the while planning for career counselling. I entered career counselling with determination and focus and things gradually went down hill.
There comes a point when all the career choices, future plans, and next moves are in your court and I found myself paralyzed with fear of making the wrong choice and struggling to make ends meat yet desperate for change and liberation. The conflict between the need for change and fearing the wrong decision was mentally paralyzing and threw me into depression and anxiety. There is a fine line between hope and darkness and it is like walking the tight rope. I am always falling off the rope, one way or another and rarely can I balance to the finish.
It has helped, immensely, that I find so much pleasure in mt. biking. I harped on this for exercise, but the way I exercise and my hobby is the same. But it is important to have a hobby, a mental outlet to wile away the hours. The time that is normally filled with work doesn't go away and I can not stress how long, lonely, and isolating those hours can feel whether you are physically isolated and alone or not.
Over the course of one empty day to a week to a month it is easy to fall into a syndrome of emptiness and the effort it takes to fill those days with even three or four hours of purposeful, productive activity is excruciatingly difficult. But it is critical.
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