Funemployment

I have been reading lots about emotions here: http://reallifeyoga.blogspot.com/

She talks about feeling disappointed and judging yourself. About deciding what is the right amount of effort to put into feeling disappointed. Should you completely detach yourself from your achievement and never feel disappointed? Should you be hard on yourself? The answer is always somewhere in the middle.

I feel disappointed that I didn't accomplish too much during my funemployment. I was funemployed for 9 weeks after all. I had a crisis and recovered from said crisis. I learned alot about my boyfriend. I trained for and ran my first 5k. I gained the ability to do some ashtanga inversion balances that I previously could not do. I thought lots about my Dad becoming cognitively disabled and how this effects my family and parents in particular. I put wall hangings up in my living room.

Maybe I am being too hard on myself.

I guess this post is about the idea of 'self improvement'. When I was reading lots of OkCupid profiles, I was shying away from people who seemed really into 'self improvement'. Something about it doesn't seem fun. Brene Brown talks about perfectionism coming from shame, and I guess I was thinking that 'self improvement' came from perfectionism, when in fact it CAN come from healthy striving. In conclusion I want to make the distinction between 'self improvement' (or really any goal oriented activity) that is based on perfectionism vs. healthy striving. Because I see the value in healthy striving. It can be a fun and worthwhile activity.

I want to focus on supporting habits that make my job as easy as possible for me (like ya know - packing good lunches, giving myself plenty of time to drive to work, knowing what I want to wear to work, packing good tea, having sweets for sugar rushes (hopefully from healthy sources like fruit), stuff like that). I also want to read more about economics, history, and science. And of course some apartment improvement projects would be nice. I'm not going to worry too much about improving my looks for now - although I do want to do the whole health check up bit when I get the really good health insurance starting in October. Additional healthy striving includes taking care of my social life. Making sure I am putting energy toward my current relationships as well as building new relationships - meeting new people (especially people in capitol hill). Also, ummm, eat more veggies!!!!

I'm sort of disappointed in my lack of personal motivation. Like now that I have this external thing (work) motivating me, I'll take better care of myself. Like I have to work so I better take care of myself so I can function. But when I was unemployed that went out the window and it didn't matter if I was starving and dirty. The whole thing is so weird. I guess I recognize that was a huge diss to myself. I'm important regardless of whether I'm doing something that requires lots of dedication to external demands.

My funemployment taught me alot. About self care, purpose, relationships, vanity, knowledge. It was 9 weeks well spent. And I'm going to a fancy dinner tomorrow (Canlis!) to celebrate my cross over into the world of employment!