As my unemployment rounds out to what will once I start my job 70 total days of unemployment, I would like to highlight a few aspects of this journey:
For starters, I believe adjusting to working full time again next week will be a bit like a reluctant kid going back to school after summer vacation. I am in for a rude awakening. But I have certainly enjoyed what I am thinking of as a bit of a sabbatical and the larger concept of soul care. Life isn’t about producing or doing but instead being. My therapist and most of my friends have commented that it was like a load was lifted from me when I quit my job. And not to get into the specifics of why I abruptly quit my old job, I will say I faced with a situation that were I to have stayed would have both been compromising my personal integrity and my healthy sense of self. I did the right thing.
Save money. This whole journey wouldn’t have been possible if I hadn’t saved up a fair bit of money. And now that I am starting a job with direct deposit (something I haven’t had in years) I am going to immediately route a fair percentage into rebuilding my next egg. Along the same lines, the simple concept of living within one’s means has been driven home to me over the past seventy days. I think our consumer culture ought to generally take that advice.
Cable news programs basically loop the same stories over and over again throughout the day. I mentioned previously that at the sort of low point of my journey, I had taken to playing Tetris for hours on end and watching mainly CNN. What I discovered is firstly, neither of those things are very life-giving but in truth if you watch one hour of cable news you have seen the equivalent of five save for breaking news. And as John Stewart pointed out that since the inauguration breaking news is not Barack Obama likes guacamole or that he took off his jacket while sitting at his desk in the Oval Office. Worse yet, cable news stories these days seem to be sensationalizing our troubled economy focusing a bit too much for an unemployed person’s peace of mind on growing unemployment rates. In the seventy days of my unemployment I was fortunate to be able to watch OJ get imprisoned, many college football games, the plane crash on the Hudson and of course the inauguration of our 44th President.
I heart my new library card. Somewhere along the way, I got a library card and began using it like mad. Years ago, when I lived in Tucson, I was very into going to the library but inexplicably stopped. Pasadena has a wonderful library system and I have already read and checked out an amazing array of books.
Lucky Baldwin’s Christmas Beer Festival. I certainly became a regular at Lucky’s and am proud to be on a first name basis with a few of the bartenders. I did carry around the glass special for most of the month.
Start a project. For me that project was this blog specifically chosen so I would not only have a daily sort of deadline (admittedly I missed a few times) but also because I wanted to hone my love for writing on a more consistent basis. As a side development, I was happy to incorporate my growing love for photography as the sort of icing on the cake. I also have very much enjoyed discovering a blogging community – some friends in other parts in the world, others in other parts of the county and some very new who have welcomed me into the local blogging community.
And a new era means a new blog…should be up and running soon, enjoy!
4 comments:
Unemployment turned out to be a productive time for you. Best of luck in your new adventure!
I just hope you like your new job!
We're seeing a dramatic increase in the number of patrons at all of our libraries. It's a sign of the times, I think.
This has been fantastic reading. Many thanks.
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