What Does Freedom Look Like Six Months Later?

I almost missed noting that I've now been unemployed six months (as of Sunday, to be precise). I've most definitely enjoyed this long stretch of freedom, not the least of which because of the simple act of sleeping. Of all the aspects of working that I wasn't sorry to say goodbye to, waking up to an alarm clock in the morning perhaps takes the cake. There were so many things wrong with that setup that it's a wonder that I ever got any sleep over the last 22 years:

• the pressure to go to bed by a reasonable hour each night, regardless of whether or not I felt tired at that particular time, virtually ensured that I'd find it difficult to comply
• knowing that the alarm was going off at a certain time seemed to always result in me waking up just the exact amount of time ahead of it to cost me the maximum in lost sleep (an hour was a favourite figure, as I'd never manage to fall back asleep when it was so relatively close to the alarm time)
• the extreme fatigue that I felt most mornings, at a time when going back to bed wasn't an option, was always perversely reflected by the lack of drowsiness at bed-time
• ever since my teenage years, my body has inexplicable preferred a 2:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. sleep cycle, which just doesn't happen when you're holding down a day job

So the sleep situation has been a complete turnaround since August of last year, and I love my new hours.

But it's really only been in the last little while that I've started acting like an unemployed bum in the other important regard: networking. I think I did well keeping in touch with many of my friends from my last job, but I wasn't expanding my circle much beyond that. Since I'm not looking to go back to where I left, I obviously need to cultivate connections elsewhere if I'm going to find new work. As I posted last week, I've now begun making more of an effort to do just that. Whether any of it will bear fruit beyond the gratification of hearing from old friends still remains to be seen.

In most other ways, things are going pretty much as I'd expected. Despite a few disbelieving reactions from some quarters, I have absolutely no problem filling my time every day. I can honestly say that I've not been bored even once over the past six months, and don't expect to be anytime soon. There are still projects that I want to tackle but haven't gotten to yet, meaning that my To Do Queue is not in any danger of emptying out on me. And that's a good feeling, indeed.