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[outsidetheparty]

squirrelhaven has a yoga guru. She came back from her retreat last week with one of those wonderful pithy bits of wisdom that only gurus are licensed to produce, which I will now mangle for you third-hand: you're either bored, or you're scared. Balanced in the middle is happiness.¹

Pretty good, eh? You could apply it to everything from video games to sushi menus to, oh, let's say career plans.


As many of you already know, I've been struggling with various issues in my last job, the biggest of which was that I wasn't the least little bit interested in doing it. It was a good job, with really smart people, in exactly my area of expertise, and I was bee oh arr ee dee bored.

So I'm done. They were very nice about letting me off the hook. More so than I deserved.

My immediate plan is to spend at least a couple of weeks doing absolutely nothing productive. For all visible purposes, this will be identical to the past few weeks, during which I also did little or nothing productive. The difference will be that now I won't be pounding my head against the keyboard trying to be productive. So hopefully it will be a bit more relaxing.

I haven't really decided what comes after that. There are two or three substantial options, plus a couple of less likely wildcards, that I'm still undecided between -- but they all have these factors in common:

1) I will not be working for anyone else.
2) I will not be drawing any kind of salary.
3) I will not be bored.


This is sounding pretty good to me.

¹ [edit: I am corrected. It's supposed to be "If you are unhappy in life, it's either because you're bored, or you're scared." I think my version sounds more mystical and guruish, though.]