I’ve been staying at my parents’ house since I left the hospital on Saturday. Since their bedroom is on the main floor of the house, I’m sleeping there so I won’t have to go up or down any stairs. Because it’s a room I’m unfamiliar with, I wake up every morning slightly disconcerted and wondering where I am. The next thought I have is “that’s right, I don’t have to go to work today” and it immediately feels like Christmas morning. I love not working. Actually, it’s not even that I love not working that much – I love not working my horrible, soul-crushing job.

I’m finally starting to feel like I have a brain again and am much less foggy than I was after the surgery and all the pain meds. I set a goal before my surgery to spend at least 3 hours a day doing something related to moving to Chicago. It can be job searching, looking for apartments to rent, or even just looking up meetings or other things in the city I’ll need to find once I move there. Tomorrow I am going to start making myself adhere to this goal. Prior to today, I haven’t really felt that I can concentrate or be very productive on that front, but I’ve basically been having the same day over and over again and it’s not going to get me to Chicago if I continue. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice day filled with naps and surfing the internet, but it’s not going to keep me interested for too much longer. So tomorrow I will start timing myself and making sure I devote 3 full hours to making the move to Chicago a reality. One of the big problems I run up against is that I don’t want a job even remotely like the one I have now because I hate it so much, but I’m kind of lost when it comes to another job or industry I should be looking in. I’d love a job that involved more creativity. One that I got to work more closely with people would also be an improvement. I’m still pretty pissed off about how the meeting with my manager went on my last day. I’m trying not to dwell on it, but I’d really love to tell him off at some point. Hopefully the stars will align and I’ll be able to make that happen – to some extent anyway. The more I think about it, the more surprised I’ll be if they don’t let me go once the 5 weeks of FMLA covered leave are over. I really do hope that’s what happens. It would be stressful (especially since I have basically no savings to fall back on), but I really could use the motivation and it would give me a lot more time to look. I should be able to get unemployment benefits if they let me go.

I can’t believe it’s 11 pm already. I haven’t stayed up this late in a while. I’m pretty tired at this point and am headed to bed as soon as I’m done with this. Actually, that looks like it’s going to be right now. Yay for sleeping and a productive day tomorrow!