The IDEAL Day

310 days into my jobless experience, and I have finally developed and executed, on my own, the perfect day. Not an average day or a miserable, useless day... but a glorious, simple, focused, exciting, ideal day. What is ideal, you ask?

One where I:

• Accomplish significant things
• Take advantage of the day
• Get money (income, yeah!)
• Finish my To-Do list
• Eat good food
• Spend a significant time outside
  
• Learn something new
  
• Do something generous
  
• Have an afternoon siesta
• Do yoga

Whether it takes 10 months to get into the groove of working "freelance," at home, on my own schedule with my own plans... or I've just been pre-occupied/retarded/lazy... I do not know.

All I can say is: There does come a time when all the pieces of the puzzle fit together, the clouds part and the path ahead is clear, brain waves dance, buddhas sing, mountains move and snowballs finally start rolling.

It's because I like to plan. Planning is good. Planning is fun. I plan for weeks, months, years, even, depending on the circumstance, but long enough to say "I'm going to do this" and try it on, see if it fits. For instance, I began planning to move to D.C. a year an a half before I got here. I've been planning to apply to grad school since last April. I've been planning to plant flowers all week.

Today, plans - BIG plans - were executed. Step one. I then had coffee and read three newspapers, outside, in the amazing morning air. Step two. Momma got paid! Step three. I did EVERY errand on my list, including mailing my dad a father's day card... I've never mailed a card to anyone in my family, they're reserved for the special occasions when I'm in town... but things are changing! Step four. I ate a lobster roll - that magical food! - a red velvet cupcake, and sushi, all in one day. Step five. I was out the door by 10 (after working since 7) and spent most of the day running errands and eating, outside, on my bike, in a skirt (with shorts underneath, for safety). Steps two and six. I then learned how to control the mosquito empire that invaded my entry way (lemon juice), buried a dead bird, and kicked ass in yoga. Steps seven, eight and ten. Okay... I missed out on the siesta - Step nine - because siesta time went to a last minute trip to Kinkos (Step one) - but I was so close, and the day was so good, let's just say it happened.

All this, and "getting a job" wasn't even on the list. No word back still, but today, I did do what I said I would do, all my chips in, and now I know it's meant to be or not, and I'm ready for it.

Perfect, no?

Monday

This is the earliest I've been awake in ages, so let me take a moment to say that laziness is real, and you may not realize it until you've slept through,like, every episode of Car Talk for a month and curse how things have gone too far.

What I needed was fresh, 8-am air, early, cool-ish, undamp air, so I spent the morning watching the good people of the city head into their respective places of work with a cup of tea and a newspaper to swat away the herd of mosquitoes looking for breakfast. The cat hunted down the morning flock of singing birds. Nature gesticulated. The world turned.

And boy, do those working people look excited! They have stylish sunglasses and colorful skirts and office-appropriate summer shoe wear. I reflect on my first summer in D.C. as a young professional harassed by the heat waves that were as constant at 9 am and 7 pm as my linen separates and Steve Madden flats. Seasonal allergies beckon me back to the present and I marvel at the limitless species of insects I can find in the clover bed alone. I worry the cat is not as bored or as hot as I am. I fantasize about the job I want, how I will 'head to work' by this hour, but I wonder if the the catastrophic scenarios that are causing them to take so long to get back to me will be permanent, and whether a singing telegram falls in the category of "over the top."

I think I'll go in and poach an egg and make some iced tea before yoga. The cat will be under my arm in a moment after she runs to the neighbors bushes to avoid the cool, bug-free, uneventful indoors. Typical. Monday.

Quitting the Gym, At Last, the Unemployed Girl Gets Realistic

Today, I'm heading to the gym to end my membership, which is something I have been dreading since unemployment. I think I looked at my gym membership as a sign of some stability in my life, some level of security, some level of accomplishment, combined with a love for elliptical and the unease of losing the corporate rate that somehow never disappeared. Maybe I looked at the gym as an office, some place I could go to every day, a place I belonged? I'm over it now. A sympathetic but practical voice says, "It's okay, it's time, you'll live." On to bigger and better things. I've rekindled old passions that I abandoned when I moved to DC, when I was too overworked and young and exhausted and ambitious to do anything else. Yoga, rock climbing, dance. Okay, so I'm not exactly going to be saving money. But maybe the money alone isn't exactly the point. Maybe what's more important is what it gives back, and though the gym gave me a good dose of dopamine and the promise of a good bod, it didn't give me a life outside of my job/jobless identity. You know how I was saying that people don't have much of an identity in DC other than their work? Yoga may not be the answer to everything either, but I know it's a solid part of who I am, and knowing that, and giving it it's fair share of attention seems worth a shot at bringing me closer to figuring out what I want professionally and who I am as a whole, if that makes sense. This is my once chance to rebalanced my life before I really get into the heat of it, so I'm kind of pissed that it took so long to get here. I also wished I had picked up hobbies that were free. More cutting of the nonessentials, as I get closer to figuring out what the nonessentials are.

Dulce de Leche--Best Food Ever

I've eaten my share of dulce de leche thanks to Dolcezza in Georgetown, but never like this before. In the spirit of “When in Rome,” I have grown into what my friend NM has penned as an “alfajore”. Alfajores are an argentine sweet—dulce de leche sandwiched between two sugar cookies that one must eat after every meal. Dulce de leche is cream and sugar heated into an awesome, delicious, creamy paste that is often mistaken for caramel but is much, much better. At Dolcezza, you can enjoy in three forms: Churros, Alfajores and gelato (of course). Here, you can have it on everything, in everything, as any meal so long as you breath. This food is a gift from heaven—truly… it's the most pure and sinful of milk-meets-sugar bliss—but, as you can imagine, if eaten every three hours, it goes straight to the middle region and results in the partaker having a cookie-like appearance. Ergo, I am now an alfajore. Add bottles of red wine to this diet and we have a massive caloric dilemma. How can I resist the local cuisine when in a foreign country for a limited amount of time? My only hope is to head straight to zy-oga (yoga) tomorrow morning until I leave or stop eating dulce de leche. Since I don't plan to do the latter, zy-oga it is. No one said temporarily adopting a culture was easy. NM will buy a whole tub of it from the supermercado and attempt to eat the whole thing with a spoon. Quite the cultural and nutritional experiment that I plan to document from first bite through painful completion... stay tuned.