Time to Rest

froschkind

I’ve been battling with regular updates here. Thinking I was just distracted or (gasp) lazy, I gave myself a pretty hard time. After a serious exhaustion/dehydration attack (embarrassing) a couple weeks ago I’m coming to terms with the fact that I have just been flat out overwhelmed. And that is something I wasn’t planning on during the laid off - unemployment - employment process.

I actually assumed I would have endless hours in the day and really did my best to fill all that time productively. I took on new projects. I bounced from one contract job to another then from one babysitting gig to another to make ends meet. I took a part time job and still continued to fill my time with to-dos like I had the time to fill.

What I didn’t realize is the amount of mental exhaustion this takes. All the worry, the stress of juggling completely different jobs, the over-commitments all add up to one very crazy life. And the assumption that since a good chunk of your time is spent at home or in coffee shops is rest enough is a bad one to make. Because chances are that time is also full of email writing, web searching, off-hours working, and worrying.

So I’ve fueled up on Gatorade. I'm making myself sleep decent hours. I'm giving this thing called "rested" a try. And I'm really trying to enjoy my life again. If you’re unemployed or going through the damn lay-off process take a word from the now wise – it's a-okay to say "no" sometimes. 

Picking Up the Dropped Ball

As I'm sure you can obviously tell, I've been pretty busy and sorta dropped the ball here. The last month three or so weeks have been a roller coaster. For a bit, I was working for a start up here in town. I really adore the start up environment but... you know, it's always a little bit of a gamble. Now that has ended and my new job is starting up tomorrow, I thought it was a good time to check in with a little Instagram roundup from the last couple weeks.

A all-too-kind friend in D.C. sent our house Georgetown Cupcakes and swoon. That little salted caramel cupcake put me in sugar coma heaven.

Beating the Unemployment Boredom

When I was first laid off I was so fine. Better than that, I was perfectly ok. Aside from being breakup sad I lost my job I was sure I would find another within a couple weeks. I puffed up like a balloon and sailed on my hopeful way. But man, I've been slowly deflating. I spend every morning looking for/applying for/following up with jobs, running, cleaning the house, running errands.

But I've had too much time off and let me tell you... it's overrated. The break from the daily work grind was a little peaceful at first - like a forced vacation. I took a week off and just hung out before starting the mad dash to proverbial new job finish line. I even went to New York for some much needed friend time. But now, without some afternoon or evening excursions, it's hard to not slip into a deflated slump. This week I went and did a little capitol exploring with Sam. We had a wonderful time exploring and it was a great way to spend an afternoon!

So if you've been laid off here are 10 tips to beating the unemployment boredom:
1. Email your sister three times a day. Tell her every little thing you do.
2. Walk or ride your bike when doing errands. You have no where to be so stop rushing.
3. Re-organize your entire closet even if you did so two weeks prior.
4. Look up 15 recipes for cooking brussel sprouts and try at least seven or them.
5. Rearrange your bedroom furniture. Hate it. Put it back.
6. Try and dance like Ellen. Also- never miss an episode.
7. Blackmail your roommate into taking a day off and putt putt golf. Flasks optional.
8. Dust your ceiling fan. Lord knows you need to. While you're at it clean you AC vents too.
9. Take a million instagrams of your cat doing cat things. Doing anything really. Then don't stop telling him how pretty he looks.
10. Start that blog you were talking about.