How to Fill those Unending Hours: A Guide to Productive Unemployment

1. Learn how to do things by yourself. Now that you're unemployed, you have tonnes of time on your hands. Your friends, God bless them, are still happily employed and likely won't be able to skip their weekly staff meeting to play mini golf on Wednesday morning. You can still hang out with them in the evenings if you haven't tired yourself out with all the exciting one-on-none activities you have crammed into your day.

2. Go to all those places you always wished you could go, but never had time to when you had a job. Best case scenario: everything you always wanted to do doesn't cost any money. 'Cause let's face it, it's not like you're bringing in anything that could be classified as an income (even in jest). For future reference the Science Centre, IMAX Theatre, neighbourhood comedy club, and community centre photography class all cost money. It would be wise to avoid these. Try the library, or the mental hospital.

3. Spend time with your pets! You've neglected them for so long. Now's a great time to start walking your dog twelve times a day. Don't have a pet? Beg, borrow, or steal one. I was out of town this weekend, so I improvised and contracted some bed bugs. They aren't fuzzy and furry like a puppy, but they sure are friendly. Why, one of them "kissed" me thirty times during my two hour nap. I had a nasty reaction to those kisses and am now covered in golf-ball sized pustules and vesicles. But the doctor has me on a lovely drug cocktail to counter the symptoms, and at least I got some quality time in with some of nature's lesser creatures.

4. Cry. Cry yourself to sleep. Cry when you are sending out resumes. Cry when you are playing mini golf by yourself for the third week in a row. Cry when your are in the library reading self-help books that you are too embarrassed to check out in case your friends ever happen to remember you exist and come over one day after work for water and ramen noodles. Cry because you are covered in giant, red blotches that make you irritable, and unpresentable even if someone were to actually call you in for an interview.
   
   
5. Write some lists.

~g. mango is overdue for an after dinner drug cocktail