Today was actually a pretty nice day. It’s my last day of hanging out at my parents’ house. I have a dr’s appointment tomorrow afternoon in the cities and I’m planning on going back to my apartment after the appointment. It’s been nice being at my parents house, but I’m really looking forward to being back in my own space. I’m sure I’ll head back here again for a few days in not too long. I’ll go stir crazy in the cities without being able to drive my car.

I also emailed my friend that I do stand up comedy with. We are going to a show next week and I told her I’d love to start doing more open mics and really delving in and trying to become better at stand up. I’ve had fun doing it in the past, but haven’t devoted a lot of time to it. The comics I most enjoy watching are the ones who are comfortable on stage and having a good time. I’d love to get to a point where I’m comfortable on stage and just able to have fun with it. I think I could be a pretty good comedian if I just put the effort into learning and getting better. Now that I have all of this time off from work it’s basically the perfect time for me to do that. I can job search during the day and use the stand up as my creative outlet. When I’m working there are so many other things competing for my time in the evenings it’s been hard to focus on the stand up. I also don’t like the politics of some of the open mics and what you need to do to get time. It turns me off to the whole situation and makes me not want to be a part of that.

I’m tired and looking forward to getting some sleep. My parents bed is really comfortable and I’m going to miss sleeping in it. I’m going to miss not seeing them, too, but I think I’ll be more productive in the cities. It’s hard for me to concentrate and get a lot of stuff done while I’m here.

As far as the job searching goes, I found a website today that listed a whole bunch of creative type companies in Chicago. Some are advertising, others marketing or graphic design. I started looking at the advertising ones to see if there are positions I could apply for without any experience. It looks like a lot of them have account executive positions which don’t necessarily require you to have a lot of industry experience. I need to do something different with my resume so I can submit it for those positions. Tomorrow I’m going to try and take a look at my resume and figure that out. I’ve been looking for jobs for a few days now, but not actually applying for any. I need to start applying for them soon. I like the idea of an ad agency and learning about a different industry and getting experience doing something outside of financial services. It’s possible my background working for a mutual fund company would come in handy, too, if I were able to get a position that worked doing ad stuff for a financial company. So applying for these advertising jobs is definitely a great place to start. It’s nice because it’s still a professional job and if I liked the work I could continue doing it. Hopefully the pay will also be alright. Whenever I read a job description for something similar to what I do now it just fills me with dread.

I also googled “writing contests” earlier today. I didn’t look too hard at any of them, but it looks like there are a lot. I should really enter a couple. I need more practice writing and it would be a great way to get it. I think my latest dream job is to be a writer. Like a novelist. Ideally I’d like to be able to support myself writing books. I could then travel a lot and spend a few months in Thailand or wherever and just write from there. I like this idea a lot and plan on keeping it out there in the distance, but not out of sight.