What I’ll Be Doing With All My Free Time: List One

Ever since I resigned from my job last week, I’ve been walking around with a giddy sense of excitement. I feel like one of those perky green shoots popping up in my garden, all bright and shiny with possibility.  It’s not even as if I worked all that much – 20 or so hours a week, usually.  But I realize that my job was on my mind a lot more than that, especially in the past few years since we’ve taken to using e-mail more prolifically.  There was just never any letting go 0f it, especially with that work e-mail shortcut on my desktop.  So even when I was home on a “day off,” there were often work issues on my mind.

Soon that will be over, and the thought of that freedom is very intoxicating.  I’ve started making mental lists in my head of the things I’ll do with my days.  Here’s what I’m thinking about:

1. Spending more quality time with my dogs.  If you’re not a dog person, you won’t get that.  But the entire time I’ve had my dogs, I’ve been working – for a while, at two jobs.  Although I lavish them with attention, it’s usually at the end of my day when I’m tired.  They’re more than halfway through their lifespan (just like me!), so I want to enjoy them while we’re all still in relatively good shape.
2. Find a favorite cafe and frequent it regularly for writing.  I’ve always loved the idea of having a “regular spot” to hang out, people watch, and do some writing.  I’m going to start looking for a place like that.
3.  Start working in earnest on the plethora of writing ideas I’ve been filling notebooks with for the past five years.  I’m always getting brilliant ideas for things I’d like to write about.  Now’s the time to pick one and go at it.
4. Play more music.  This is a big one.  I firmly believe the loss of a musical life has been a big part of my recent depression.  I’m on a major quest for a good musical group to join, or a least a good teacher  to study with. Angie Mizzell, one of my favorite bloggers, wrote a post the other day about finding your “sweet spot,” the place where, according to Max Lucado,  your past successes and deep feelings of satisfaction intersect.  As soon as I read that sentence, I knew where mine was.  Playing music ~ gotta get back to it.
5. Read more.  My husband would laugh at this, because he already thinks I read more than anybody he knows.  But I recall the days when I was a young SAHM, I spent an hour or two in the afternoons while Brian was napping, curled up in a chair with my book (of course those were pre-internet days.)   I’d love to refresh that habit.
6. De-clutter.  Every Wednesday this summer there will be a whole load of stuff coming up from the basement and going directly out to the trash.  Promise.

In the midst of thinking about all these things I want to do now that I won’t be working, oddly enough I also find myself thinking about what kind of work I want to do next.   Do I want to go back to office work or maybe look for something in a school or college?  What about something totally different – in the media or marketing fields?   Because I do think I’ll want to work again some day.  Not sure when.  Not sure where.

But I’ll start another list for that and keep you posted.