<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"  It takes a lot to rattle former workaholic Monica Calderon. Even after she and her coworkers were let go from their jobs with an apparel company she&amp;#039;d helped build from the ground up, she remained optimistic. &amp;quot;I was the one saying, `We&amp;#039;re all going to find jobs, and they&amp;#039;re going to be even better!&amp;#039;&amp;quot; she recalls, a bit ruefully. Eighteen months later\u2014401(k) cashed out, personal items sold, luxuries a thing of the past\u2014she&amp;#039;s still going on job interviews. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s like dating. You hope they&amp;#039;re going to call you. It&amp;#039;s that whole game of `Do you like me, do you like me, do you like me?&amp;#039;&amp;quot; But instead of letting the uncertainty rule her life, she&amp;#039;s joining an increasing number of women who are pouring their energy and focus into something outside their career.  &amp;quot;For some women, losing a job is a guilt-free way to finally do some of those things they&amp;#039;ve felt they haven&amp;#039;t had time for,&amp;quot; says Dr. Gail Saltz, associate professor of psychiatry at New York Presbyterian Hospital. For Monica, whose mother suffered from Alzheimer&amp;#039;s, this has meant getting active with Project Alzheimer&amp;#039;s. Monica recently traveled to Sacramento and Washington, D.C., to speak to Congress about procuring funding for Alzheimer&amp;#039;s research and care. &amp;quot;My mother had Alzheimer&amp;#039;s for 20 years, so I know how it affects individuals and families,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;In my last job, there&amp;#039;s no way I would have had this kind of time to be an advocate.&amp;quot;  On the whole, more women are taking on volunteer projects. A Bureau of Labor Statistics survey found that volunteer rates among women rose between 2008 and 2009 while they stayed unchanged for men. And they&amp;#039;re especially up among the unemployed business sector (for both sexes). For example, participation in Taproot\u2014a pro bono service foundation that caters to business professionals wanting to give back\u2014increased a whopping 171 percent.  Through her experience, Monica has felt her priorities shift. &amp;quot;I used to be a workaholic. I never took vacations. I won&amp;#039;t ever do that again. I look at a lot of things differently now. Things that were so important to me aren&amp;#039;t that important anymore. I have good days and I have bad days. I don&amp;#039;t want to spend another birthday unemployed, but I really try to see the silver lining, and I believe that something good will come out of this.&amp;quot; Monica tries to pass this attitude along to her jobless friends. &amp;quot;My advice to anyone who&amp;#039;s newly unemployed is to try to enjoy your time. Learn to relax and not be stressed and caught up in the rat race of it all.&amp;quot; Time seems to be the motivating factor when it comes to these kinds of sizeable shifts in life focus. &amp;quot;Women who are out of work are able to say to themselves, I don&amp;#039;t have a choice, and since I&amp;#039;d just be sitting on my tush, I might as well exercise or meditate,&amp;quot; says Saltz. &amp;quot;Whereas it would be reasonable to integrate those things while working, many women feel too overwrought or guilty because they think every minute they aren&amp;#039;t working, they should be with their families.&amp;quot;  This was the case for Lauren Smith, a lifelong runner who hadn&amp;#039;t engaged in the sport with any regularity in years. As an editor at a women&amp;#039;s magazine, her days were long and stressful and her schedule left little time for anything other than work. Outside the office she found it easy to rationalize not exercising with &amp;quot;it&amp;#039;s been a crazy day&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve barely seen my fianc\u00E9.&amp;quot; Meanwhile, she kept making what she refers to as monthly &amp;quot;donations&amp;quot; to the gym, which she hardly set foot in, and she felt guilty every time well-meaning friends and family asked if she&amp;#039;d run any marathons lately. &amp;quot;I was someone who ran Division 1 in college, and when you&amp;#039;re a runner in college and high school, it&amp;#039;s something people always ask you about,&amp;quot; she says. She knew she&amp;#039;d get back to it one day\u2014it was a part of her, after all\u2014but she didn&amp;#039;t quite know when.  When the magazine where she worked folded last March, Lauren didn&amp;#039;t see it coming. She suddenly found herself out of work and unsure how to proceed. There were the immediate job interviews, the kind that follow magazine foldings like an aftershock, but once it became clear a new job wasn&amp;#039;t going to present itself right away, Lauren was committed, she says, to a schedule of lying around in her pajamas. Around the third week she couldn&amp;#039;t handle having zero to report to her fianc\u00E9 when he&amp;#039;d inevitably ask her what she`d done each day, so she figured she may as well hit the gym\u2014at least that&amp;#039;s something, she thought. In fact it turned into more than something quickly, and before long she was running five times a week. She just ran a half-marathon and is able to fit into her &amp;quot;skinny jeans&amp;quot; for the first time in years. &amp;quot;My mood is definitely better and I&amp;#039;m just happier when I&amp;#039;m running,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I feel like I actually work through my stress and anxiety when I&amp;#039;m running as opposed to obsessing about everything at home.&amp;quot;  Saltz agrees: &amp;quot;Exercise is a very effective mood lifter,&amp;quot; she says, also noting that its therapeutic abilities can be powerful in fighting more than just a temporary funk like Lauren&amp;#039;s. &amp;quot;It can go head to head with pharmaceuticals as a way to help depression.&amp;quot;  Along with dropping a size and feeling generally more positive about her job search, reconnecting with running has motivated Lauren to make healthier decisions elsewhere in her life. &amp;quot;I now eat a healthy breakfast at home every morning, which makes me less cranky and prevents me from eating a huge lunch later that day. When I was working a traditional office job, I was always running out the door and usually skipped breakfast or grabbed something unhealthy. I&amp;#039;m also now getting eight hours of sleep a night.&amp;quot;  Besides making it easier to change one&amp;#039;s eating habits, a break from office life can be freeing in other areas. &amp;quot;Employment is a such a big personal identifier,&amp;quot; says Jared Matthew Weiss, journalist and &amp;quot;life stylist,&amp;quot; who&amp;#039;s coached a number of women adjusting to job loss. &amp;quot;People identify themselves with their jobs, and when that&amp;#039;s gone, they feel free to change a lot of elements of who they are.&amp;quot;  April Davila had thrown her all into pursuing a career in Hollywood as a producer when the writers&amp;#039; strike and recession forced her to recognize she&amp;#039;d spent more time chasing work than feeling fulfilled. &amp;quot;It could have been a very depressing situation, but I found myself writing when there were so few demands on my time,&amp;quot; she recalls. &amp;quot;I started a blog; I finished short stories I&amp;#039;d been working on\u2014barely\u2014for years and started sending them out to journals. When my husband and I sat down to have the `what are we going to do&amp;#039; conversation, it just made sense for me to go back to school to pursue writing. We figured out how to make it work financially, and I dove right in.&amp;quot; Two years later she&amp;#039;s in a full-time writing program and finishing her first novel.  The free time has allowed her to tend to health issues as well. &amp;quot;For years I had mysterious stomach problems that the doctors couldn&amp;#039;t figure out. Taking advantage of the time I had as a student, I began to explore and experiment with different ways of eating. After being in and out of the hospital, on stronger and stronger medications for years, I finally seem to have found a healthy way of eating that allows me to live pain-free without all the meds, and that is very exciting, not to mention that I&amp;#039;m 20 pounds lighter than I&amp;#039;ve ever been in my adult life.&amp;quot; This curiosity about diet is what ultimately led her to launch the Month Without Monsanto project, in which April attempted to avoid genetically modified organisms (GMOs) for 30 days and chronicled the experience on her blog monthwithoutmonsanto.com. Though the month is over, she plans to continue exploring her dietary options.  For Sara James, a little extra downtime offered her a chance to focus on the health and well-being of others. She found her passion\u2014teaching yoga to breast-cancer survivors\u2014after losing her consulting editor job 18 months ago. Looking for something to lift her mood, she responded to an announcement that her yoga studio was seeking teachers to work with breast-cancer survivors. &amp;quot;It was weird because I don&amp;#039;t have any connection to breast cancer, but I was just so drawn to it.&amp;quot; A certified yoga instructor already, she began teaching a class in the fall. &amp;quot;You can just see how thrilled and grateful the women are. It&amp;#039;s the same core group of women each week, and for many of them, it&amp;#039;s the first time they&amp;#039;ve been able to reconnect with their body in a positive way.  &amp;quot;You go from being unemployed and feeling sorry for yourself to doing something good for someone else\u2014and you come home feeling like you&amp;#039;re the luckiest person in the world,&amp;quot; says Sara. &amp;quot; It just makes your heart huge. Even on those days when I feel stressed and it&amp;#039;s the last thing I want to do, it&amp;#039;s the best thing I&amp;#039;ve done all week.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/a11072/the-upside-of-downtime-making-the-most-of-unemployment-441842/>