Tuesday, April 20, 2010

To-Do List while Job-Free

So, I've been job-free for just a couple weeks now and I've been busy, busy, busy!  I went to Vegas for five days right after I got done training the new girl.  And boy, oh boy, I needed a drink after finishing up the training...  I don't think I've ever been to Vegas for more than a few days at a time to gamble and just hang out.  It was pretty fun.

After returning from Vegas, I went over to Chris' house a few times to help him start cleaning out his garage.  Other than that, I haven't really done a whole lot.  The last few days, I've been on jury duty and officially got put on a case yesterday.

So I've decided I need to make a "to-do list" of what I want to do while I'm not working.  Some of them are totally practical, some are completely pie-in-the-sky-weird and some are just miscellaneous notes to myself.  Either way, the to-do list, which I used all the time while working, is going to become essential to getting stuff done while I'm job-free.

  • Read some books:  some poker books, Your Money or Your Life, Getting Things Done, the Four-Hour Workweek, Eat Pray Love, and more to add I'm sure...
  • Watch some movies:  Catching up on my Netflix list would be awesome... but that's to fill in the cracks.
  • Travel:  May - Kauai, June - Atlanta for Oasis of Fun, July - Williamsburg, VA for Gulf Games, August - NorCal for MeepleFest.  There's a decent chance I might take a road trip to the east coast for Oasis of Fun and just bum around over on that side of the country until Gulf Games about a month later.  That would be fun.  Just plain fun.
  • Volunteer on a regular basis - I want to volunteer at least a couple times a month with local agencies.  Most likely, it will be Project Angel Food (prepping food to deliver to homebound clients) and AIDS Project LA (food bagging or office work).
  • Get rid of stuff out of my apartment.
  • Exercise.
  • Eat through my pantry & freezer to save $$ on food.
  • Figure out what I want to do for work - I could just get a job doing what I've been doing, but I've been contemplating what all my options are and I'm trying to figure out which direction I want to go.  Do I want to make more money with more stress and responsibilities?  Or settle for less money, but potentially much less stress?  I'm hoping that I can read some books and do some soul-searching to figure this out.
  • Floss more regularly.  
  • Learn some German.
  • Learn Morse code (?) - this is inspired by that episode of the Amazing Race when the Asian couple got eliminated.  
  • Sleep a normal amount - I've been sleeping SOOOOOO much the last couple weeks.  I need to stop oversleeping.  It makes me feel lazy and unproductive.  I also would like to keep a fairly "normal" schedule.  I tend to lean towards the night owl side of the spectrum, so it's tough.
I'm sure there will be more and I'll just have to add them as I think of them.