Today was a good day. I slept in and relaxed all day. As far as the job search is going I didn’t get my 3 hours of work in on that today, but I did work on my friends birthday present that I have to finish before her birthday at the end of the month. I’m a perfectionist, but I do like how this this purse is turning out. What I really like about it is that basically the whole thing was my idea. I figured out what I wanted to do and then figured out the different materials I’d have to use to realize that. Surprisingly it’s turning out quite a bit like what I pictured in my head. I like taking things from start to finish – as in starting with a rough idea of something I want to do and working it all the way through until I have a finished product. If I could find a job that allowed me to do something similar it would be perfect. I got the idea for this last year, but didn’t figure it would take me nearly as long as it did. I’m guessing by the time I’m done I will have put in at least 80 hours working on this gift. And it’s not really anything that serves a useful purpose. I think she’ll love it and appreciate all the work I put into it. Plus, it’s been pretty fun to do. I worked on it a lot right before her birthday last year before I realized there was no way I was going to finish it. I then put in some more time working on it after my last knee surgery, but put it down and didn’t pick up it again until now – about 6 months later. I’m ridiculously excited to be done with it and to have a final, finished product. I think when all is said and done I’m going to be pretty proud of what I created. I’m going to have to figure out what my next project is going to be. The problem is, I start things and then get a little ways into them and lose interest. My living room floor basically looks like a wasteland of abandoned arts and crafts projects. Someday I’m sure I’ll finish all of them. Or not. We’ll see.

i went to the meditation center tonight and meditated and listened to a darma talk. The meditation was awesome. It feels like it’s been forever since I made it to a meditation center because of the knee surgery. It’s really only been about 2 weeks which isn’t that long, but I’ve also slacked off on my daily meditation practice as well. The last few days I’ve gotten much better at meditating twice a day like I was. The pain pills make it hard to get through the meditations because they mess with my head so much. Hopefully it won’t be too much longer that I’ll be taking them, but we’ll see how things go over the next week and how my knees are doing. I’m tired now and so glad I can go to bed in a few minutes and sleep in and relax again all day tomorrow. Now that I think about it, I’m going to force myself to work on the job stuff for the 3 hours I decided I need to do that a day. I’m going to rework my resume with the goal of creating one that would be good to submit to advertising and creative agencies. A lot of the agencies I saw in Chicago didn’t actually list specific jobs they have available, but rather suggested emailing them a resume and cover letter with information on your background. I plan on emailing all of those agencies and explaining a little bit about myself as well as what I’m looking for in a job and asking if they have anything that might be a good fit. I figure I’ll probably not hear back from 90% of them, but what really do I have to lose by reaching out and giving it a try? I’m really excited about hopefully finding a position with an advertising agency or some other creative firm. I’d love to be able to move to Chicago in a couple months excited about taking writing classes at Second City as well as excited about a seeing where a new job could take me. It would work if I found another financial services job of some sort, but it would be much better if I found a job that I could be excited about too. We’ll see how that all pans out I guess. I’m tired and need to head to bed now. Goodnight.