Unemployed? The Best Ever.

Hike East Atlanta from LeahAndMark.com on Vimeo.

Here’s the truth. I’ve made the shift. Whereas when I was first ‘let go’ back on August 21st, I was worried. WE were worried. There are bills to pay, things to do, things to repair… so yeah, money was and is still a big issue and area of concern. My job search has come up much less than stellar – and while I have been on a few substantial interviews, they’ve either selected no one from the list of candidates (I’m pretty sure that’s the case with the three primary jobs I interviewed for/wanted) – or one of the arguably MORE qualified and unemployed people out there beat me to it! – and as we all know, there are A LOT of Financial and Business Analyst out there that don’t have jobs.

So, while I continue with my online schooling, and weekly application process – with every passing week, Leah and I are both becoming much more accustomed to all of this freedom we have. While the money is always a concern in the back of our heads – we’re realising that we can do so many more things now than we could when we both worked full time 40 hour weeks.

The primary factor being time. Whereas before we had a little more money but no time – now we have even less money but LOTS more flexibility and for me, MUCH MORE Time. Leah still has a great deal of school work, but there is a lot of flexibility in her schedule compared to when she was tied to a desk for 8 hours a day. Although I used to joke about it before, it’s increasingly becoming true that Jobs really do get in the way of my(our) life(lives).

Packing everything into the two days on a weekend is such a… difficult challenge and even then, I hardly think any of us are really happy with that situation/schedule/pattern of living. So. Like our good friend MelissaL said to me thru Twitter back on that day I was let go – losing my job was the best thing that could have happened to me. And while I say that with all of the naive optimism that someone can possess – there is definitely that fear in the back of my head.  And yet, I think we’ve both crossed a certain bridge. Leah with the overwhelming volume of her studies and me with the idea of not having what I once thought was a dream job (any of them.) So now that we’re on this side of the mountain… even though it’s always going to be a degree of struggle… there is much more possibility. Oh yes. We have big plans.

I’m working on something. But until then – the above video is a mashup of our Friday Morning Hike (last Friday) at SweetWater Creek just past Six Flags here in Georgia, and then also our day yesterday at the East Atlanta Strut. We have lots of video of the EAS so I’ll have to make a new one of just trip sometime. Have an awesome, awesome Sunday. Oh. And if you want to meet up during the week – Let me know.