Free time

Once again, I'm in a period of unemployment and lots of free time.

A few weeks ago, I had a job interview. It was only part-time, and when I applied they said it was seasonal. I don't think it's appropriate for me to tell you what the job was here on this blog, but it was basically my dream job. It was an editing job that also would have made use of my background in geology and Utah history. But when I mentioned that I had applied to grad school (which I still haven't heard from), they seemed skeptical that I would be able to do school and work for them at the same time. It turns out that "seasonal" was more like two years.
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[That's Jimmy's contribution to the blog. Now he's trying to bite me because I made him get off my keyboard.]

I do find this whole scenario ridiculous and frustrating. I honestly can't imagine anyone else being more qualified for the position, but I find it unreasonable that they would expect someone to work twenty hours a week for two years. I offered to work for the six months before school, but they said "this position is not intended to be temporary." Um, most people don't seek twenty-hour-a-week jobs as permanent jobs, especially if they have ideal qualifications. And what if they hire someone less qualified than I am who quits after a few months because they got a full-time job? They would have gained more by hiring me!

Oh well. It is nice to have free time, and This Is the Place is a fun place to work, even though it doesn't pay much and it doesn't start until the spring. I had a return interview there this week.

My ideal day off consists of the following:

• Cleaning 
• Going downtown to do research on my Pioneer Day article/book. On the day I got my glasses, I instead went to the Whittaker Museum in Centerville. I enjoy going to the Church History Library and looking through microfilms of old newspapers (this week was mostly the 1930s). I do miss working there. Here I am doing those things for fun, and I used to get paid to be there!
• Cardio. Swimming is a good option for wintertime, but it's also a good option when I'm not working, because the pool is only open at weird hours, so it's best to go in the morning or early afternoon. An old swim coach happened to be in the lane next to me this week, and he gave me some pointers, which I appreciated. I've also been doing some running, but of course I have less motivation when the trails, and even the sidewalks, are covered in snow. But I did have some good runs this week along the Jordan River and to the top of Eaglewood.
  
  
  

  

  Aww, a feral cat!

  
  

  

  The highest street in the neighborhood, about a thousand feet in elevation above my house. There's also a gated, paved utility road that goes even higher up, but it was covered in snow.

• Strength training. My Fitbit Ionic watch has some great short but challenging workouts. (Planking is hard!) I often do these while watching terrible 1960s sitcoms (The Flintstones, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Andy Griffith Show, Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C., Green Acres, and Bewitched have been on recently). I've heard that since there are so many movies/TV shows/musical works, people declare certain genres inferior because it's impossible to consume them all. So I mostly watch sixty-year-old sitcoms because that's how I can limit the consumption, even though the quality isn't good (but it's clean!).

Then, if I have extra time after I've done all that, I can relax by reading or by watching movies with foreign subtitles. (Movies are a waste of time, but if I turn on subtitles, at least I feel like I'm studying another language.) This week I watched Fantastic Mr. Fox with French subtitles, thereby learning that "castor" is the Latin name for beaver. I last watched that movie in 2011 (it came out in 2009), and it is very much a hipster movie. And that got me thinking that hipsters are a product of the 2010s. What will replace them in the 2020s?

My problem now that I have lots of free time is making sure I don't stress myself out about trying to make the perfect choices. I think I almost always make wise choices, but I agonize unreasonably about the choices I make. I'm going swimming, but should I have gone running instead? It doesn't matter! They're both good choices!

For example, I got new glasses this week. I went to Eyeglass World, because I've never tried them before. America's Best glasses always get smudges, and Standard Optical is ridiculously expensive and takes a long time. But then I wondered, should I have done more research and picked another glasses place? I got two pairs of glasses (which is standard for Eyeglass World), so the price per pair wasn't very bad. But do I need two pairs? It has been three years since I got glasses, but the time before that was five years between glasses, so am I getting them too soon again? You see how my brain works? It's exhausting!

I'm trying to be more confident in my choices. One thing I like about myself is that I'm motivated to make wise decisions.

I already took members of my family to two Sundance Film Festival movies, Miss Americana and Come Away. I will go more in depth on those next week, when I recap the entire Festival. I have three more tickets for this week, and I'm hoping to see even more as well.