June was a very long month.
Normally, June starts to perk me up with the close of the year end
schedule at work and the warmer weather and the fun summer things to do. This year though it dragged. Once I gave my notice, it felt like it took
forever to get to my end date. I gave
them a 3.5 week notice, which I still think was the right thing to do given the
circumstances, but it meant a very long wind down period. On top of that, many of the things I was
looking forward to doing either did not happen or were disappointing. Looking at my list though, the good still
outweighs the bad, so maybe a better month than I realized. Without further ado, here are my reflections
for the month.
The Good
Quit My Job – I gave my notice
last month, but now I am officially done.
Honestly, it does not feel real to me yet. I have been unemployed for one week now, but
I mostly feel like I am on vacation instead of unemployed. The wind down at work was very weird. Although no one really did much to try to
talk me out of leaving, neither did they seem too concerned with dealing with
all the stuff I do. There was very
little talk about who was going to take over my tasks, except the
acknowledgment that my actual supervisor position would not be transitioning to
the person replacing me until after the July quarter end. I did very little training or reviewing with
anyone. My boss was on vacation my final
week, and her boss did not even say goodbye to me on his way out the door on my
last day. When it got to five o’clock on
my last day, I just put my pass in a drawer and walked out. It was very weird. Of course, now it is not my problem that no
one seems to have made any plans for how to handle my crazy workload for this
coming month. I am so glad I am
done. So far no calls, but we will see
if that lasts through the quarter.
Husband Got a Job – Hallelujah
my husband has a job. First, this is
great from a money aspect. Although I
was prepared for us to have zero income, his having a good paycheck again will
make my own time off much more relaxed.
Now I feel like I can put off looking for my own new job for a month or
so, giving me time to focus on studying and trying to decide how I want to
proceed. Even more important though, he
will not be at home with me during my time off.
I was getting really anxious about the idea of having to spend every day
with him. We have had one week overlap
(his job starts July 2nd), and I could not bear it. He is driving me crazy. He craves human contact after four months of
unemployment. I just want to be left
alone.
PA Trip – My annual picnic PA
trip was a success this year. I left the
day after my last day of work and I stayed three nights. The first two were up in Greenville, PA near
the friend who was having the annual picnic.
The annual picnic was great this year.
It rained, so we were a bit confined to the garage (big spacious garage
that fits several tables comfortably), but we had a good time anyway. We ate great food, played a crazy card game,
and hung around talking. I had an
unexpected bonus in one of my college friends who has not made it the last
several years was able to come. My last
night was in Pittsburgh because I wanted to see my family and check in with
Grandma who has been struggling health wise a little bit. Grandma seems like she is hanging in there,
but I am still glad I booked the extra night to be able to see her.
Books – I had been trying very hard to limit my book reading
to two or three books a month because of work demands, domestic
responsibilities, and the supposed studying.
However, once I made the decision to quit my job, I immediately picked
out five books to read for the month of June.
It was so nice to just breeze through books this month. Of the five, two really stood out to me. The first was The Perks of Being a Wallflower
by Stephen Chbosky. This was a sad
beautiful story that also invoked some Pittsburgh nostalgia in me. The second was the controversial but oh so
amazing All the Ugly & Wonderful Things by Bryn Greenwood.
Festival Food – In last month’s blog, I was looking forward
to June festival season. Overall, it was
a bit of a bust (see below), but the food was wonderful. One of the major reasons, I like to go to
festivals is to experience the food. The
food did not disappoint. I had hot
sausage (my favorite!), meatballs, quesadilla, and soda.
The Challenges
Diet – If you remember, I changed my diet plan for May and
was planning to bring it forward into June.
The goal was to try to keep doing the 1200 calorie days twice a week and
keep the remaining days under 2000. I
actually did worse on this plan in June than I did in May, maintaining the
schedule less than 50% of the month. I
am basically the same weight at the end of the month as where I started, so I
guess maintenance is good. However, I
really want to lose about 20-30 pounds, so I need to do better. I am going to try the under 1200/2000 plan
again in July. Hopefully, less stress
from quitting the job will make it easier.
Plus, I no longer have candy dishes, birthday cakes, and Friday breakfasts
to navigate.
Husband Home – I mentioned this briefly above, but my
husband is driving me crazy. I cannot
wait for him to go back to work. He is
starved for attention and for some reason cannot seem to maintain enough
friendships to fill this need. He
expects me to fill the void, jumping at me with dinner and a stream of dialogue
the moment I walk in the door after work.
On top of that he has become a somewhat weird health & fitness
junkie, which has lasted a lot longer than I expected. Now I have a constant stream of updates on
how much body pain he is in (ignoring my recommendation to rest a day here and there), criticism on my food choices in comparison to his, and
complaints about how big his clothes are.
I assume this obsession will drop off once the work picks back up. Finally, none of the house projects I wanted
him to do have really seemed to make much progress. All I really wanted was the bathroom on the
main level, the guest bedroom, and the deck.
While I understand the deck being a bit hard due to the amount of rain
we got, the rest of it just seems to be uninteresting to him. Instead, he has done some various cleaning
projects which I guess I cannot complain about too much, redid the paving in
the backyard which I thought unnecessary and he does not seem to be satisfied
with his work anyway, and attempted to install a microwave above our stove
which went badly (currently no microwave is installed) and I never wanted in the first place.
Festival Experience – The food was great, the rest of my
experiences not so much. First, Herndon
Festival was a wash. I never went. I asked my husband to go after work on Friday
because there was a band there that he supposedly likes. He claimed they could not play the songs he
would want to hear because of the family atmosphere (wtf?). I should have just gone without him, but
figured I would go over the weekend. It
ended up pouring most of the weekend and I never got there. Celebrate Fairfax was also rained out, but I
do not think it had to be. They ended
the Gin Blossoms set a bit early because of a storm blowing through, and my
husband did not want to wait it out to go to Sugar Ray. We were a bit underwhelmed by the Gin Blossoms and are not fans of Sugar Ray. Still it would have been nice to just stay,
hang out with our friends, and enjoy the night out. We went home even though the friends did not
and it seemed like it turned into a pretty good evening for them. Taste of Reston turned out to be nice
weather, but I did not get to enjoy it much either. I wanted to go on my own or meet my husband
there, but he wanted to go together. He
spent the whole time giving zero opinion about what we should do or eat or anything,
and my stepson complained every little bit about how boring it all was. Rain may not be under my control, but I am
going separately to these events in the future so my husband cannot make me
miss out on my fun.
The Future
Fourth of July – We have one event planned for July so far,
the fourth at Great Meadows with some friends.
I did not really want to do this, but I am sucking it up and hoping to
have a great time anyway. I actually
used to love this holiday, but it has felt a little underwhelming the past few
years. I am kind of glad we are going
out for it this year, but I am a little upset with the pricing. It is a flat fee that could have been split
by up to 15 people. At 10-15 people, I
felt comfortable with the price. It
looks like we are only having 5-6 people which makes it a bit pricy for what it
entails. However, my ever annoying
husband committed us to it, and so we are doing it. That said, I do actually expect it to be a
good time. There will be friends, good
food, some music, and fireworks. I love
fireworks.
What to Do Next – Now that I have no job, I have to figure
out what to do next. I plan to enjoy
some time off before really committing to a job search, especially now that my
husband is going back to work. I have
all kinds of thoughts about what to do with the time off. There are things I want to read, things I
want to watch on TV, cleaning projects that seem necessary, exercise I want to
do, trips that are probably more than I should spend but I still want to take,
activities to try, places to visit, etc.
It is probably not feasible to do them all, but hopefully I will get
some clarity on how to actually spend my time once I have been off for more
than a week. Eventually, I do need to
start brainstorming, researching, and working on what the next step in my
career will be. I am not ready for it
yet, and I do not want to rush into something I will regret.
CPA Studying – The one solid goal for the summer is to make
some progress on studying for the FAR section of the CPA exam. I did nothing in June as my attitude seemed
to turn into I will have plenty of time once I am done working. I did get the exam schedule for September 8th. I can still reschedule with no monetary
penalty through the beginning of August so if I cannot make the progress I need
over July I will do that. For now
though, my plan is to dedicate a few hours most days to CPA studying and get
the second one done in September before really turning too much to job
searching.
Hiking – I made zero progress on my twelve hike goal for the
year during June. The weather was pretty
bad and too many things were scheduled over weekends. This is another thing that I hope to make
more progress on now that I have no job.
Weather tends to be a bit brutal in July and August, but hopefully a few
cooler days will pop up where I can take advantage of them. There is no real change to target hikes from
last month. I still want to go back to
Harper’s Ferry again and I still want to do some of the many options in Shenandoah
National Park.
Blog – Still no promises, but I am still considering if I
want to change up the blog now that I am done working. I am still thinking of chronicling how my
adventure quitting work and jumping into the unknown is going. Recently, I have considered moving that
portion of the blog to Youtube. It would
still be very blog style not really true vlogging. I just kind of want to play around with
something new. I am not sure
though. What do you think?
There you have it, my month in review. See you next month!
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