Do Stuff

One of the nice things about being temporarily unemployed is having hours of free time. My wife is at work. My friends are at work (whether "work" or working at home, taking care of their houses and kids). Hours of free time, to do what I want to do.

Before I had this free time, I looked forward to evenings, weekends, holidays, and vacations. Those were my chance to have free time. "When I get the time," I'd say, "I can finally..." I don't even remember all the things I wanted to do. Bike rides, working around the house, really taking care of the garden, re-developing some musical skill, starting a blog, organizing, tinkering, personal programming projects, reading... Most people probably have lists like that. Vague lists in their heads of things they'd really like to do, if only the time was available.

And for me, it is! Not that being out of work is entirely--or even mostly--a good thing, but it gives me that free time that I wanted for so long.

Sometimes, wanting is better than having. Before I had this free time, I could imagine all the things I'd like to do. Imagining doing things is much easier than actually doing them. There's no preparation, no clean-up, and any tedious parts are done in a mental fast-forwarding flash.

Now I have days mostly free. I still have some constraints. Finding, reading, and evaluating job postings takes some time and mental effort. Applying for jobs, following up on applications, and things like that have eaten huge chunks of some days. Besides that, I generally want to stay within reach of the telephone in case someone calls to offer a job. But my days are mostly free.

What have I actually done with my free time? To be honest, not much. It's been more than nothing. I've read some, written some code, cleaned gutters, and done some painting (of the non-artistic variety). Why the disconnect between my imaginary free time, during which I did all kinds of things, and my actual free time, which has been lacking that spark of intentionality?

I have some ideas, and at least one of them is probably right. None of those reasons is anything particularly difficult to overcome. And regardless of how I overcome the obstacle to intentionally using my free time for something worthwhile, the goal is the same: use my free time for something worthwhile. Don't waste it, just because it's not rare and precious right now.

In short, this is the challenge: Do Stuff.

Irons in the Fire

On August 6, 2008, my job quit. Express Auto Delivery stopped operations and turned me into an unemployed bum.

A few days of being an unemployed bum is great. Rest and relaxation, taking care of little things around the house, and generally not doing much of all was a nice change of pace. Weeks of being an unemployed bum, though, is a bit of a drag. And my wife likes it less than I do, as illustrated by a mostly-lighthearted conversation from last Friday:

Wife: I'm tired of being the breadwinner around here.
Me: But I baked bread today. [which is true, two loaves of wheat bread]
Wife: I'm tired of bringing home the bacon.
Me: But even if I get a job, you'll still have to go shopping.
Wife: But I'm tired of buying the bacon.
Me: You shouldn't steal bacon.
Wife: [the look]

But things are looking promising. My employer prior to EAD has made me an offer to come back. I've had first-round interviews(*) with a hospital system and with an insurance company. And today I got set up with an interview for a position with the avionics company that pretty much every engineer I know works for or has worked for.

So I've got some irons in the fire. It's exciting having so many great possibilities open. I hope to get two interviews and get an offer for both of them, but that'd just be icing on the cake. I also hope to have time and weather conspire to let me take a nice all-day bike ride before I start the new job, whatever it is.

(*) First-round interviews are chats, in person or over the phone, with HR folks or recruiters, in order to make sure that you pass the Turing test and are not obviously an axe-wielding psycho. And now that I've typed that, I feel like I need to have an axe handy for my next phone screen...