Disorientation

After 7 years at Bloomberg, I resigned on Monday. The day was surreal, anticlimactic and a long-time coming. Everything felt right until I was on the train home around 5pm and I couldn't think of what to do next. I have been living a comfortable routine being distracted all day long with work-related trivia. Now, I had a whole afternoon with nothing work-related to worry about. I have some interviews to prepare for, and of course the Foreign Service Exam to study towards, but these require a formidable self-motivated drive to get accomplished. This is not one of my fortes. I'm more of a laid-back procrastinator than a time-charting, self-organizing machine. And I am panicking now, 2 days into my new-found, scary freedom.

So, I did what any guy going through an early-mid-life-crisis would do - I bought a car. Only it's a Passat station wagon and the colors Connie wanted are non-standard and it will take months to get it. But, we are closer to having a car, which we've been planning to get for over a year now. Our new place has a parking garage under the building. I was unwilling to play the mad parking game in our previous neighborhood. So getting the cable hooked up properly, and getting a car, and pulling out my last two wisdom teeth have been keeping me busy (read: distracted). But what's next? The options are laid bare on the table. Spend two months studying hard for this pie-in-the-sky job with the U.S. State Department, or get another softwrae job (still have a shot with Google and Goldman Sachs next week). I need to hunker down and get into a routine. I need to have three meals a day and looks like I have to arrange for them to be preapred as well. I need to continue unpacking the boxes and making the guest room/office and kitchen more habitable. I need to prepare for interviews. I need to create a study plan. And I need to rent a car until my rare-color Passat arrives. I hope writing this down will make it easier to follow through. There's a part of me tempted to get used to watching TV and playing viedo games all day - I'm still waiting for my first Gamefly Wii game to arrive...