However, some people know how to turn a negative into a positive. I recently came across a blog, www.mscareergirl.com, about helping young professional women find their path to success and happiness. I’m one of those sappy people who believe your line of work and happiness go hand in hand. But don’t we all believe that? Don’t we all want to do something that we love? It doesn’t necessarily have to put a smile on your face 24 hours a day, but it should be something you want to be doing.
I got in contact with Nicole Crimaldi, founder of www.mscareergirl.com, who has put together this website to inform others about topics such as life after college, career advice and personal finance. After explaining my current situation and my endless string of misery, she asked me, “If what you're currently doing is making you unhappy, what you can get rid of to make yourself happier?”
The more I thought about this question, I realized that it goes beyond just job searching, but it applies to a person’s lifestyle. Honestly, job hunting for eight hours a day will make any person insane, which brings me to passion projects.
In Nicole’s blog, there was an article called “How Eight Months of Unemployment Turned out to be a Blessing in Disguise” by Srinivas Rao, who talked about passion projects. We all have them. Passion projects are our one days… “One day I’ll go rock-climbing.” Passion projects are things that we’d like to do but claim that we don’t have time or resources for. I’ve mentally stored away numerous ideas for passion projects throughout the years. Granted I had school and internships to focus on, I’ve used the excuse of not having time more than I should have. I can’t argue that I don’t have the time now because time is not a problem for this unemployed girl. Some passion projects may require some funding such as traveling. However, there are plenty of inexpensive passion projects that people can do. Exercising was something on my list, so I joined a gym a few months ago. It beats sitting at home doing nothing all day. Srinivas took up surfing. “When I was unemployed, I literally would spend six hours a day hanging out at the beach and surfing,” he says in his article. “I’m healthier, happier, and have way more energy because I found this outlet.” He states that finding an outlet that will get you through the unemployment period will be much more effective than sending out a million resumes every day.
My very good friend Helen Gebregiorgis recently graduated Columbia College Chicago after studying film. She’s in my situation; however, she’s using this time to work on her own passion project. As an independent filmmaker, she and a friend are currently traveling for about five months to document life in East Africa. They will travel to Eritrea, Egypt and Kenya. They’ve been very determined about rising money with bake sales and starting a funding account on www.kickstarter.com called ‘Cornucopia of Africa.’
This proves that passion projects, no matter how expensive, are possible. And I encourage all of you who are currently out of work and sitting at home doing nothing and complaining about how much it sucks to be unemployed to pursue your passion project. And please don’t say you don’t have one because we all have them. You can take one of mine if you’d like.