Wasted Brain Cells

Joe's new house is about thirty minutes west of mine, and so, if you put the radio with the broken antenna in just the right place, and push the tip of the antenna against the metal handle of a broom leaning against the door, you can pick up a radio station out of Topeka that plays country music classics.

When I don't bump the radio and reduce the music to static (I haven't quite mastered the trick of the proper antenna / radio / broom placement), I've been enjoying hearing songs I haven't heard in ten or twenty years.

As I was painting and singing along last Friday, I realized I'd been working for five solid hours, listening to the radio the whole time, and had only come across one or two songs I didn't know. For some of the songs, I knew most or all of the words. (A rousing chorus of 'Delta Dawn', anyone?) For all but those few, I at least knew the chorus.

It was fun, but it's a profligate waste of brain cells. Do you suppose, if I didn't have so many cells taken up by the second (and third) verses to Christmas songs, I'd have been able to pull up a few more names of people I hadn't seen for a while at the event I was volunteering for last night? Or, perhaps, if I couldn't sing all of 'Country Roads', I might be able to remember the different ways java can instantiate variables when faced with the question on a test, which would enable me to go back and get another programming job.

On the other hand, perhaps the words to 'Yesterday', fill the place where I can't quite remember the pain of the weeks following the operation that removed my breasts five years ago. Do the words to 'The Servant Song' stand in stead of the memories of the months immediately following mom's death?

Funny, the things we remember.
A blessing, some of the things we forget.

Time To...

I'm continuing to look for work. There is activity and motion, but nothing concrete is happening.  **sigh**

Back when I was working, when I pictured unemployment, I figured I'd have some trouble filling my days.

Not yet.

I'm still faithful about looking for work each morning. (Mornings are my best time for thinking and being creative.) But I can't look for work eight hours a day. I run out of leads to follow after three or four hours.

So then, I get to take a nap. (If I can't take naps when I have no specific time pressure, when will I ever be able to take one?) The good part is that when I lie down, sometimes, I don't actually fall asleep - I just ponder the state of the trees outside my window for a bit. It's hard for me to believe, but I think I'm finally catching up on my sleep.

Then? (This is where I thought I'd be bored...)

For the past few weeks, I've been heading out to Joe's new house. It needs some serious TLC before it's ready for he and Rita-Marie to move in. She's working some ungodly hours, is totally stressed and can't help with the cleanup. It would help her to be able to move on into the house; it's much closer to her office. I can't do anything about her job, but I can ease her stress a bit by helping to get the house ready.

Each room needs to have the popcorn ceiling scraped down. Assorted wall holes need to be patched and spackled. Everything needs to be washed down and Kilzed. Then, finally then, I can paint.

As I've been working, I have been so aware of the gift of time available to me because I am not working at a paying job.  My unemployment frees up my afternoons, so I can spend several hours painting on most days. (I don't do it every day - even when it's unpaid work, you can't do it every day, right?) I've been able to spend a good ten days out there already; the way job hunts go, I'll have the time I need to spend the additional ten days I need to finish the job. It feels good to be able to help make Joe & Rita-Marie's lives a little easier; to be able to remove just a bit of stress from their days.

Good Is.

Job Hunt

I keep telling myself this is the part of my camper van saga where things don't go so well. When I left AT&T, I knew I was trading safety and stability for a wilder ride down an uncertain course. And, here I am, looking for my next great opportunity in the world of work.

I find job hunting tedious and demoralizing. A gazillion listings out there, a million of which I qualify for, yet I haven't yet found the magic words to make the job listers stop in their tracks in sudden realization that they need look no further to fill their position because the resume of the most absolutely perfect hardworking and qualified candidate just landed in their inbox after I, Janice, hit the apply button. (what is wrong with these people???)  I haven't let that stop me, it just gets harder to muster up the discipline to scour the job listings day after day when nothing seems to 'pop'. (I've found good probable matches, had two interviews in the five weeks I've been looking, so it's not an all-bad-news story.)

On the upside, after three weeks of cool temps and daily rains, Spring has decided to come back! The rains have washed away the winter dullness, the grass is green and the trees are in bloom. It's a rare day outside, and because I don't have to spend time in an office today, I get extra time to enjoy it. Blessing and Bonus all rolled into one.

I'm amazed at how quickly my days go. I keep thinking I'll run out of ways to fill my time; I will get bored with not working, but each time I complete an item on the top of my list, another appears to attach itself to the bottom. So, on the days when I can set worry about money aside, which is most of them, I find myself enjoying the luxury of time to work with my hands. Time to whittle down the list of to-dos that called to me all last year as I commuted between home and Seattle.

And. AND. All the days are sleep-in days. I realize my years of work have fostered an unreasonable attitude towards my alarm clock. Truth be told, now that I'm caught up on my sleep, I wake up just a few minutes later than I did these past few years when I was still working. The difference is the time I take to wake up slowly. To peek from one barely opened eye to check to make sure the sun remembered to rise. To mull over my dreams and set a tentative order to the tasks of the day. To stretch and doze a bit - and then, finally get out of bed some thirty minutes later.

Stop.  Breathe.  Relax.