Four days into my retirement from a long and mostly enjoyable career with Accenture, Eric suggested I re-up my blog.  At first flattered that he and others might be missing my ruminations on the human condition and opinions on matters of great consequence, I agreed.  I have not had the time to set free the creative spirit that lay dormant until  time to write the Christmas letter.  Then, I examined his motives a bit more carefully.  I don’t recall his ever reading my blog recounting adventures in Bogotá adopting Nate 4.5 years ago.  I suspect his motive is to re-direct my energies from nordstrom.com

Either way, I’m back, have  time on my hands and stuff to say.  Therefore I am qualified to blog.

On to our topic of the day: unemployment

First the rules:

1.  Engage in an austerity program to stretch out the severance as long as possible.   Let me tell you it sounded much more glamorous in the abstract.  Now that I actually took the package, signed the severance papers, and let my cleaning person go,  it’s a bit more pedestrian. 

2.  Impose rules about the “new you.”  For example,  I have instituted  a net zero policy.  If I bring a non-consumable in, something else has to go.  Unemployment is great for self-imposed order.   There’s also the one about cleaning out one room in the house every week.  Assuming I am able to accomplish rule 1 and enjoy said severance for many months, I should be done just in time for the holiday glut of intake, requiring the complete break-down and re-boot of rule #2. 

3.  Develop hobbies you never had time for.  This is a tough one because often after significant up-front investment, you realize it wasn’t the time-factor preventing you from scrapbooking in the first place — it was the soul-crushing lack of interest.

4.  Find meaningful (and free) stuff to fill the void in your life that used to be occupied by all manners of appointments, meetings, and very time-specific demands on your person.  It’s a bit disorienting at first to realize that you can arrange your day in just about any order you choose, though your waste elimination systems may be specifically geared to function only at the 5 minutes before the hour mark.

5.  No longer in charge of guiding tender minds in pursuit of corporate goals, find other ways to foist your opinions on others through therapeutic venting and pontifications…Blog!