one year ago...

In one month (and a few days) I will have been at my current job for one year. And on that day, the anniversary of my re-entry into the workplace, we can look back on that productive year and smile. But for today, I'd like to take a moment to reflect upon the glorious place I was in one year ago: Unemployment.

After being laid off and cut the largest single check of my life (thank you, severance!), I thought to myself, 'now what'? I knew at some point I would be re-entering the workforce, but did I really have to rush right into it?

Things I decided I would allow myself to do before finding a job:

• Take a 2 week trip to Argentina with someone I had only had two in-person conversations with.
• Extend that trip by one more week after aforementioned person left to return to America.
• Visit my newly engaged pal in a remote Canadian town for a long weekend.
• Spend a week with my parents, learn how to fly-fish with the old man, eat everything my mom cooked up.
• Convince my best friend/job hunt coordinator to cancel her work drinks every night for a month so we could properly spend our evenings getting wasted together.
• Celebrate the 4th of July with a week-long bender that culminated in dehydration and police intervention.

Ah, memories. Could I have asked for better circumstances to be unemployed under? I had money in the bank, I was as tan as I've ever been, and I had time to read books! For fun! I also bought houseplants (which have since passed on to the next world) and vowed to master the Spanish language after being inspired by my trip to Buenos Aires.

I think now about how things have changed... while I am, admittedly, gainfully employed, I have little/no money in savings, very little time to vacation, and my Spanish practice has been relegated to short conversations with Lopez in the kitchen. I love working at The Brucks, but I do sometimes get a bit misty reminiscing about my short-lived freedom, Summer '05...

I will say, in all fairness, that while it was a glorious, lovely time to be free, I always did have an underlying anxiety... What if there are no jobs out there? What if I run out of money? What if no one will hire me? Despite my great tan!?? So for now, I do have that security and peace of mind, even if it is keeping me from the beach for now...