The Life Of The Unemployed

Four months ago today, my current (and first ever) foray into the ranks of the unemployed began. Over that stretch, I've come to recognize some highs and lows associated with this new state.

The Good Stuff

It's been really, really nice to play video games whenever the mood strikes me! (Though even that thrill has come at a price, as we'll see down below.)

I also truly appreciate being able to stay up as late as I feel like, and then sleeping in until I wake up naturally. I've had more good night's rest over the past four months than I'd had in the two years preceding them. I get about seven to nine hours of sleep most nights, compared to the five to seven that I averaged while working.

Probably related to that first point, my head feels clearer now than it has in years. I tend to see things more distinctly, react less negatively and put everything in perspective more easily than I used to, although I'm sure some of that stems from not having to deal with the mountain of work-related issues that I encountered as the Agile Manager at work. But even re-living many of those events over the course of writing More Real-Life Adventures of AgileMan (Year 2: Easier Said Than Done) didn't pull me out of that clarity zone that I've been able to operate in since August.

Vicki and I have each commented on just how well we get along, which both of us believe stems from liking each other's company so much. I've run into enough couples in my travels where one of them obviously holds the other in contempt, and it's a source of great joy that neither of us feels that way in this relationship. We spend a certain amount of every day together, and other portions doing "our own thing" but generally within shouting distance of the other. When I was writing every day, for example, Vicki would make sure to entertain herself during that time, but was still available to me if I wanted to bounce an idea off her.

And the whole process of creating that second AgileMan book was extremely positive, as I'd hoped it would be. I love the challenge of getting the wording just right, as well as trying to keep a varied audience's set of perspectives in mind as I tell a very specific (and opinionated) story. I won't know for a little while longer if I pulled off either of those goals or not, but my own assessment is that it seems like I did okay.

Since most of my energy is self-directed at the moment, it's been a wonderful change in terms of setting goals and accomplishing them. Nothing frustrated me more at work than the recurring experience of having to deal with direction changes and unstated expectations, which always lead to the feeling of failure (whether it was real or not). In my life right now, I almost always have a clear vision of what I want to accomplish (short, medium and long term), and I work away toward it. Just something as simple as that can make a huge difference in bolstering your sense of self-worth.

In general, I'm loving the freedom that I have right now, to decide what I want to do each day. Some people have expressed surprise that I haven't grown bored yet, but I really don't see that happening any time soon.

The Bad Stuff

Obviously the uncertainty of our retirement portfolio is the biggest drag on my high spirits at the moment. If stocks were just doing their usual routine of being up a little one month and down a little the next, I'd be very relaxed about the chances of our bridging money lasting us eight years and being able to live on our RSPs from that point on. As it is, the former scenario looks solid but the latter one's pretty shaky.

Because of that, I'm faced with the prospect of finding some kind of work soon. There are lots of options, but none of them really hold much appeal when compared to more of what I've been enjoying over the past four months! I know that should be self-evident (not working ought to be better than working) but it's still bringing me down, nevertheless.

Also, my extensive (some might say "excessive") gaming of late has left me with sore hands, and a strong desire not to push matters any further than that (like, into a certain "car pool tunnel", so to speak...). If I were thirty years younger, I suspect that four hours a day of gripping a console remote would have little or no effect on me, but at this particular juncture it's resulted in a noticeable tightness that I'm now working on getting rid of through stretches and abstention.

Other than those "minor" gripes, it's been a very satisfying past four months.