Return on Self-Investment

When I left LinkedIn, I’d allowed myself six months after the end of my vacations to learn new technology, build something functional and fun, and find my next job. After a few weeks back home, spending a lot of time in my home, I decided that my first priorities should be a little different than I’d originally thought.

The state of my house was…not great. I had been telling myself for a year that I was going to hire a house keeper, but the place so embarrassing I didn’t want to hire one to clean it up! I kept telling myself that I’d clean it first, get rid of all my junk and organize everything else, and then hire somebody to keep it clean. Then I never quite got there.

It had fallen into a mild state of disrepair, as well. There was nothing major, but it was full of the sort of things I was always going to fix when I got a “round tuit”, and round tuits had been in short supply.

My life for the previous couple of years hadn’t been lived much at home. I’d been living alone. I ate all of my meals either at work or at a restaurant on the way to or from work. I did most of my socializing at work, and rarely had people over. When the weekend came I headed for the mountains or the ocean. In short, I didn’t spend time at home, it wasn’t a place I went to find joy, and it showed.

Then fate intervened. My best friend needed a place to stay. I was happy to provide one — my house is really too much house for one person, and I was happy to have the company — but was horrified at the prospect of another person seeing how I lived. I might not keep my house looking nice for myself, but there was no question I’d clean it up for somebody else.

Moreover, I had been thinking for some time about getting a dog, and this seemed like a good time. I hadn’t had a dog in twenty years, but I knew my house wasn’t going to cut it as a doggie home in its current condition.

About this same time I started looking for the easiest ways to cut back on costs, and the easiest way to do that was to start eating at home. Too, my doctor had told me some while back to eat better and get more exercise. She wasn’t wrong.

There were a lot of priorities competing for my time. I came to believe that the first, most important things I could do not just for my career but for my overall quality of life was to concentrate on learning new life skills, building better and more sustainable habits and routines. It seemed like it would pay dividends for the rest of my life.

Having decided to do these things, I realized that this was now essentially my full-time job, and that I should approach it the way I would any other. I build things for a living, and this project was building a healthier, happier version of me. I figured I had a few months to spare for that.

So, I made a list of priorities and started researching them. House cleaning, after all, is a profession, one where speed is important. The same can be said of home repair. The kind of cooking I wanted to do isn’t a profession, but teaching people how to cook quick and healthy at home is a booming one. So is training and raising dogs. There are tons of books and YouTube videos and sites for all these things. I leaned into it, and discovered I was into it.

I started going to bed at a consistent and reasonable hour, sleeping and waking up to my natural alarm clock in the morning. I’d start some coffee and wash and dry the dishes while it brewed. I made a cleaning schedule and mostly stuck to it. I started eating at home most meals on most days. My best friend and roommate built a slim volume of meals we both liked that were easy to prepare and healthy.

I got some coveralls, and started wearing them most days. I replaced the stairs leading up to my porches, front and back. I emptied my basement of junk and built out a small workshop, and rearranged the whole house so that it works better for me.

My mother visited me from Texas over Christmas. A few days after she arrived, she turned to me and suggested that we go down to the shelter and see if there were any dogs I liked. If there were, she said, she’d get it for me.

And that is how, in mid-life, I got a puppy for Christmas.

She is a nine-month old brindle pit bull mix, and she is adorable. She was picked up as a stray and I don’t know her background. I just know she is adorable, and that she is a Very Good Doggo Woggo.

She needs so much training and play and exercise and attention. I don’t know how people working full-time jobs ever get puppies. So. Much. Work. But I am doing that work, and I am enjoying it. I feel so lucky to be able to spend so much time with her at the beginning of our relationship. And she keeps me moving.

None of these were huge accomplishments, by themselves, and I was far from perfect on any of the things that I worked on. Together, though, they have been transformative, in that I now spend my time much differently and on a different schedule than I used to. I feel a lot more present than I used to. I’m getting enough rest and I have a lot more energy. I just feel better.

Coda

It is a new year, the best time to search for a new job, and I am eager to get back out there again. I love building things, and I’ve been away from it long enough.