Goals: Unemployment 2012

Today is my last day of full time employment. A culmination of 7 years. What does tomorrow bring? Well, tomorrow I'm volunteering all day. But what about the day after? Good question. Here's hoping.

Not in order of any sort of importance: 

1. Get better at grammar and build vocabulary
I love doing social media, and a large aspect of anything related to social media is language. Time to brush up on those language components. I'll defeat you yet comma placement.

2. Cook
Z and I eat out all the time. We love doing it, but I suggest it less out of love and more out of laziness. We'll be unveiling a budget at some point in the near future, and I'm pretty sure laziness eating shouldn't (and won't) be a part of it.

3. Volunteer + Do Informational Interviews
I have a set of skills I need to learn to be viable in this job market for my particular industry. I need to find volunteer opportunities that let me learn those skills. I also need to work hard to talk wtih as many people in the industry as I can. The few informational interviews I've done have taught me things I could have never learned with out their willingness to give an hour of their time.

4. Exercise
My cholesterol is high. My moral is low. I am unhealthy. Unemployment Season has no room for excuses about exercise. 

5. Freelance like a Mother F*cker
There are aspects of my job that I could never attend to because my leash was being held by (good-intentioned) crazy. Now that I set my own hours I can explore those possibilities.

6. Read and Learn about the Tools of My Craft
SEO, adwords, Wordpress, website building. We have a Lynda.com account and that magic piece of paper known as the library card. Time to use both for all they're worth. 

7. Blog
I manage (and write some) content for the work blog, and I will continue to do that. Our readership is growing, and it's something I love doing. Time to put what I'm learning there into my other blog projects, mainly CraftAmor.

8. Sleep 
I love sleep. And even things we love take discipline.

9. Create Art
The only way one gets better at art is to do art. Time to start living within facts.

10. Work on Happiness
I have a bad attitude about myself, and when life is chaotic it's easy to fall into habits that are hard to discard later. Now is that later. I have the quiet and the time for self reflection. I want to study my triggers and my reactions and see if I can trim some at the source. Time is my biggest stressor and unemployment means time is the one commodity I have in abundance. 

11. Live Lightly + Discard the Trash
I am a clean freak pack rat. I have too much stuff, and I long for clean surfaces. I no longer have the excuse to ignore the bulging closets and drawers. Time to fit the home we have. This includes both the physical space and the digital space.

Final 5 Days

In five working days, I am finished with seven years of working. Seven years. My first job. My only job. Amazing.

I have mixed feelings. There are the obvious feelings of worry. Will I be able to find work? How long should I try to find work that involves my desired career? I'll be doing freelance, we'll have unemployment, and we've saved quite a bit this past year so if we're smart, we'll be OK from a money standpoint, but still. I don't think I've yet realized how much identity is involved in any job of seven years. Who are you when a large part of what you've done disappears?

On the other hand I feel a bit like a kid poised at the edge of summer break. I never planned for lazy days (although I often took them.) Summer always meant a season of exercise and writing and classes at the community college. It meant early mornings and long nights. For me the coming season of unemployment means goals and the self discipline of learning, well, self discipline. I'm curious to see if my levels of guilt will go down now that I don't have to be anywhere 9 to 5. I'm curious if my weird issues with time strengthen or weaken.

It's a mystery, but one I'll soon have the mixed pleasure of meeting face to face.