So you've been laid off from your Manhattan media gig. Now what? Sure, you can stay in your apartment and drink vodka all day – sounds fun! – but that could quickly spiral into you losing your apartment and drinking all day on the street, a considerably less enjoyable pastime. In the interest of having as few winos as possible pissing all over McCarren Park, here are five things laid off New Yorkers should be doing besides being depressed.

Start a Blog,Turn It Into a Book and Get Rich

Presuming you weren't fired from a blog, then maybe you're eager to use some of your newfound free time getting into blogging, the very practice that helped implode traditional media in the first place. Depending on how you look at it, doing so could be either an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" decision, or it could be like the mother of a murdered son going out and buying a handgun, familiarizing herself with the thing that shattered her life. Both options are tremendously sad. But that's good, because sadness could lead to a really great, relatable blog.

Former Gawker editor Emily Gould's Harlequin-ish blog, Heartbreak Soup, was sad, and she turned it into an unnecessarily long Times Magazine article and a six-figure book deal. Cash in, saddies!

If you're more whimsical about your pink slip, start a kitschy, fun blog that'll do well with the Urban Outfitters crowd, a surefire ticket to fame, fortune and a four-minute spot on Today. For inspiration, check out Stuff White People Like and Postcards from Yo Momma, both of which spawned books people will buy for their quirky, "artsy" friends.

Actually, Don't Write a Book

On second thought, don't try to start a blog that will nab you a book deal. You'll be wasting your time: there are no book deals. Book deals were a luxury of our grandparents. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has stopped acquiring manuscripts and nobody reads anymore anyway. Maybe your blog should just be porn.

Move!

In all honesty, despite what every freshman NYU student will tell you, New York's not that great, especially if you're poor. If you've been fired, you're only going to make yourself feel worse by staying in this filthy, teeming billionaire's playground, where the uber-rich won't hesitate to step on a beggar in the way of Bulgari.

I have friends in Arizona whose mortgages on their three-bedroom homes are what I pay for my 10' x 10', sparsely furnished bedroom. They have the time and money to travel, and they couldn't care less about what happens in all of Manhattan. There's a different world just west of here—explore it. Start over, or just regroup before moving back to NYC. Tip: Austin is awesome.

Apply to Grad School

Although it's certainly not always the case, sometimes good people get fired because they aren't good at their job. Maybe you weren't good at yours. If you think that might have been the problem, consider grad school.

A great many people end up in grad school because they're directionless cowards, terrified of failure and life itself. These are the same people who end up buying sports cars in their mid-40s and fistfighting at their children's athletic events. If you apply to grad school with the intention of getting better at something you really love to do, your professors will notice this and favor you over the frightened losers, and then you'll learn a lot.

Columbia and NYU both have great graduate programs in journalism, but don't forget that "moving" suggestion. ASU and Northwestern also have good J schools.

Volunteer

Know this: no matter how bad you, with your cup of coffee, your electricity and your computer, think you have it, there’s literally hundreds of millions of people who are in a much worse place. Perhaps you’ve seen some of them in our very own, fair city, using the hard, cold concrete as a bed. These people can’t apply for unemployment benefits because they’re clinically insane and can’t remember if that's the cause of or consequence of their predicament. These people need food. Feed them! There are lots of places you can help do that. Find out more here.