Boundaries

The best part of being unemployed… I don’t have to wear pants!!

Back when I had to report to a cubicle for a living, everything I did on weekdays had constraints. I would take my morning dump while blowdrying my hair, and brush my teeth while getting dressed. I had to optimize my precious morning minutes to meet the boundary conditions of arriving to work in presentable order before my boss got in.

On non-working days, entropy prevailed and everything decayed into a natural state of sloth. I would stroll into the bathroom with my iPad and read the news and decide to go back to bed if the world wasn’t to my liking. I usually never got as far as putting on clothes, because no one was gonna see me.

Now, every day can be a non-working day. How am I supposed to optimize my actions to zero boundary conditions? It’s been one day, and already I look something like this:

the oatmeal

Some people manage to run their own successful business from home without succumbing to the urge to run off and go on permanent holiday. It’s doable. I’m trying to force myself to be productive by disconnecting the internet during the day. I created a list of tasks that I should be working on, so I know where to direct my attention if I start feeling shiftless.

We’ll see how it goes. I’m leaving for Portland in a few days to visit Jenny, so I guess I already screwed up my plan of not treating unemployment as a long-term vacation.

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