Imagine this: not having to drive your painfully long commute to work, or having time to finally meet up with your friends for a 5PM happy hour at that cool downtown bar you’ve always wanted to check out.  I always imagined that my life of unemployment would be great: sleeping in, vacationing, eating ice cream, watching lots of television, partying it up …   I imagined all this plentiful free time I would have to do all the things I never get to do.  It’s supposed to be great.  I thought how lovely it would be to have time to do groceries and cook at home, how clean my place would be, how happy my dog would be to have me around more often. 

It is great.  It’s awesome.  …   Just the part about the plentiful amounts of free time to play and hang out, that part is a myth.  Well, at least for me, I'm busier more than ever.

What have I been doing?  Well…  I left my nice salaried job back in July 2010 (after close to 10 years), and for that first month afterwards: 1) I did an independent contract gig at Expedia for a month, 2) I went to Hawaii for the first time in my life for a week, and 3) then came back to a to-do list as long as the Nile River (I brought my trusty notebook with me to Hawaii and jotted notes down while there).  The second month, I’ve had time to reorganize my entire closet, play the piano, actually watch 6 episodes of Season I of Mad Men since I rarely ever watch TV, see friends that I haven’t seen for months and years, take my dog to the park, actually cook a little (which also saves money), start my own website and blog, make connections with some really awesome women, read several books I’ve been wanting to read, reorganize my finances and credit cards (hoping to last as long as I need to), find my own health insurance (I know a great guy if you need one), file my non-provisional patent for my furniture design (WOOT!), work on building a demo from my product design, … lots of meetings, and the list goes on and on and on.  This, I’ve done in less than a month since returning from Hawaii.

But plentiful amounts of free time, no.  Think about it – you work a full time job, and the things you do outside of work are the things that need to get done to keep life afloat, i.e. take out the garbage, pay bills, see friend or family or your significant other, sleep, and eat.  This is especially if you don’t have the luxury of having a stay-at-home significant other with no kids to help you run your home or your life operations.  The queue of things that you want to do just grows and grows and grows in the meantime.  I’m talking finally moving all of my old 401K’s to that rollover IRA, finally taking those yoga classes that I had prepaid for months ago but never went to, all of that.

On top of that, if you have any aspirations of starting your own business and joining the ranks of entrepreneurs around here (like me), you definitely know that’s a ginormous list of things that need to get done there.  I want to take advantage of every minute and second in unemployment to get as much as I can possibly get done.  My brain’s been flooded with finances, resources, alpha, beta, demos and pitch decks, …. the three year roadmap, fundraising, marketing plans, revisiting the competition, incorporation and equity discussions, …  the list goes on and on and on there too.  All the things you did while employed was just enough to keep that idea alive and maybe inching forward – now all the things you do with all this “free time” is everything in your power to make that idea real. 

There are a few tidbits of advice I have for anyone in the world of unemployment like me with the ginormous to-do list:

1.  Wake up early no matter what.  I’m talking 630AM… 730AM.  
2. There is no easy way - work it, own it, make it your own.  Don't cut corners.  Own your I.P., add your own flavor to it.
   
3. Determination.  Determination.  Determination.   Failure is not an option.  Time to hustle!
   
4. Grow some very thick skin very fast, if you don’t have it already.  Rejection hurts, … and I’m sure I’ll get rejected and fall flat on my face at least a few times during this journey.
5. Don’t forget your family and friends.  I am one of the luckiest people in the world I think because I have the most wonderful friends in the world who I am confident will stand by me all the way to the end.  Make time – spend quality time with the ones you love.  Nothing is worth sacrificing this.

Pretty damn amazing thing happened today.  Spent the day immersed in my Korean-ness with my BFF, ate Korean food for lunch and watched heart wrenching Korean dramas all afternoon.  (And yes, my plans to start the week as super productive me was delayed a day in favor of spending quality time with my friend.)  Anyways...

We are watching the drama, and in between lines of the actors speaking French and Korean with Chinese subtitles, which we cannot read, we had some mini-conversations with each other.  Suddenly I say, "Holy canoli, I snooped recently just out of curiosity (curiosity is my downfall, or maybe my "thing"), and I found out Andrew <omit last name> is a VP at <omit company name>."  "Interesting," she replies.  "What do you mean 'interesting'?"  "Well, you actually said his name, you haven't said his name in years since it happened", she wisely remarks.  ...  Wow.  I am amazed.  Wow.  ...  Wow.  That is true. 

Blows my mind.  Just like that, without intending to or over-analyzing the situation and coming up with some magical process that I will put myself through to prove to myself I have moved on, let go, forgiven my ex (and this is THE ex from 2006, broke my heart), ...  it was done.  Just like that.   Done.  For the past four years, you may have heard me refer to him as "FF", or "FuckFace".... ( ... hmm, am I allowed to write that?)  ...  And now, I won't.  I don't have to.  I am free.  I've let go.  I've moved on. 

I forgive you, Andrew.

~Arry

I love social media.  I'm all over it - Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Blogger, etc...  I love how it's allowed me to keep in touch with friends all over the world, reconnect me with friends from decades ago, and build new ones in our ever so busy lives.  Even with Twitter, I cannot thank this tool for how many awesome women I've been able to connect with because of it.  Social media is fun when it comes to dating - you can instantaneously see how your love is doing throughout his day, see the comments from those in his life, virtually flirt back and forth, ... social media provides tools for building authentic relationships --> but in the world of dating, it is truly important to remember to consistently use the more traditional means in growing faith, trust and strength in your love: holding hands, talking on the phone, going on walks, cuddling, kissing, and eye contact (some of my absolute favorites).

As much as I love social media, there are some new challenges and changes it has produced in the world of dating and love.  Some things I've learned and will share:

1. Online personalities do not necessarily present the real person as they are in real life.  The person who you may interact with and see online is not necessarily the same person in person.  Why?  The person you are building in your mind from watching the conversations and persona's online creates a person that is a little different then who that person is in real life.  Without the other communication cues like facial expressions, body language and tone, what else do you have to work with?  None - you interpret with the lens and bias that you hope to find in this person.

2.  Over-analyzing will drive you literally insane.  I'll be the first admit it, I've been on both the receiving end and the one giving my partner grief over this.  Is he posting on your Facebook wall 5 times a day - is he obsessed and a stalker?  She has guys commenting and posting flirtatious comments to her posts - should u worry?  You had a fight and he has stopped commenting on your wall - is he ignoring you?  She un-tags herself from photos with you in them - is she hiding something?  Oh my freaking goodness, love can make a person do some ridiculous things, that's for absolutely sure.  I've been there, I'm there.  But - if you're feeling insecure, social media can have the potential to pour highly flammable gasoline on it triggering responses  a zillion times more magnified than necessary.  My advice (and I continue to struggle with this as I am the analytical type) - take a chill pill.  Actions speak louder than words - how has he been treating you in real life?  Plus, I think men look at social media as more an informational tool than women.  Women love social media because the world of relationships is intermingled with it. 

3. You can see all the action your ex is getting.  Some girl just posted on your ex's wall that she had a great time last night - WHAT?  You just broke up last week!?!?   You see the pictures and comments.  Some advice: maybe it’s important for you  to carefully watch your Facebook feed to make sure that nothing comes up that will cause any hurt to any exes, or maybe if you're the sensitive ex, you're responsible for clicking “hide” in the news feed until you’re over it. If at least one of those things doesn’t happen, it can get painful for one person, minimum.  Whatever, it's none of your business.  It's none of their business.  You two are no longer together. Move on.  Here, the best advice is, ignorance is bliss.  De-friend, hide the feeds, out of sight is out of mind.  Move on - what the point of pining over someone that's moved on without you?

4. Breakups and new relationships are public.  I hate this part.  There's literally a documented history of all the stupid relationships I want to forget in the world wide web.  When do you change your status from single to taken?  When do you change it from taken to single?  When do you share that first picture of you being a couple with someone?  Or man, you've heard of people publicly dumping another by merely changing their Facebook status.  (Totally messed up).  I tend to wait about three months or so before letting others know - yes, it's none of their business, but by then, I usually am so smitten I'm DYING to share with the world my happiness with my man.

5.  Again, social media is a compliment to the relationship.  Don't use it as a replacement - take the time to spend quality time with the one you love, real quality time talking, eye contact, taking walks, holding hands, walking side-by-side, ... and my most favorite, cuddling.  <3

It's super annoying, and we all do it.  The guy in the meeting checking and responding to emails, totally ignoring the actual meeting and people in the room.  The guy  talking shop during dinner at a restaurant with his girlfriend, while she sits there trying to be polite while looking painfully bored.  No, actually, she reaches into her purse and pulls our her own cell phone to check her messages.  Better yet, notice how people in the Pacific Northwest tend to look down when crossing a street, rarely ever do they look both ways.  It gets more fun when you have a person staring at their crack-traption as they cross the street.  What about when you're in a conversation, say with two other friends, and someone's cell chirps or rings MID-conversation - and the friend responds to it.  WHAT?  Yes, that happens too.  What gives one the right to throw all the rules of etiquette, honor and respect out the window because the crap-traption is ringing, dinging, and vibrating?  (I get it, there are special circumstances when this is excused - but hopefully, you still say "excuse me" to those present before going there.)

The cell phone.  The cell phone is an amazing device - a device that brings you music, Facebook friends, applications, porn, and games all in one - it's a source of learning, connecting - and endless distractions.  What ever happened to quiet time?  What happened to talking to your neighbor or enjoying the fresh air?  Now we fill it with email, texts, a quick game of bejeweled, or a stupid you-tube shenanigan.  Yea, so what, you've got a zillion facebook friends and you're communicating all day long with your friends.  Yea.  But why do you feel so alone?  We've become a society that seeks emotional satisfaction from the internet - we're missing out on the real-life social experiences and starving ourselves of what we need emotionally.  We've regressed.  We need to RE-learn how to bond with each other humanly (via voice, eye contact, touch), to attach emotionally, cultivate a lifetime of real life experiences.  The cell phone is a tool - a means, but can no way substitute for the real world around you.  The cell phone distracts - and what we could end up with is a society of the 'absent-present': physically in a place but mentally absent, off in another world preoccupied by our crack-traptions.  Is it all worth it - these superficial connections?  Yes, they are (if done in moderation and with care for those around us).  We are more and more connected to one another - across regions and timezones.  Be aware and take the time to care for those physically present around you.

I'm very guilty of this myself - using the cellphone as a means to kill time, look "busy" and disengage from the world.  It's time to realize/remember that these gadgets are machines, tools - and can not in any way replace true life experiences and real relationships.

I've been working on this list for the past year or so, and it's been revised so many times.  Of course, this is from my perspective, a woman who dates a man.  Anyways - here's the current state it's in.  I welcome your feedback + thoughts.  xoxo

1.  Love yourself.  Be yourself.  Be true to yourself.  Be good to yourself.  Take care of yourself.
2.  If a man wants you, nothing can keep him away.  If he doesn't want you, nothing can make him stay.
3.  Trust your gut.  Don't make excuses.  Own it. 
4.  Don't try and change yourself for a relationship that's not meant to be.
5.  A friend does not mistreat a friend.  If the relationship ends because he was not treating you as you deserve, then HELL NO, you can't "be friends" after wards.  No no no no no no no way.
6.  Things don't get better.  It is what it is - don't stay because you think it'll get better. 
7.  The only person you can control in a relationship - is you.
8.  Have your own set of friends and hobbies you can call your own.  A woman needs good solid girlfriends.
9.  Boundaries - if something bothers you, speak up.  If you don't like how someone is treating you, say something.
10. Change comes from within.  You cannot change someone else.
11. He is not a quasi-god.  We are all human - no one is better than the other.
12. Never let a man (or woman) define who you are.
13. A man will only treat you the way you ALLOW him to treat you.  Don't allow laziness be an excuse.
14. All men are not dogs, evil, etc...  There are some good ones out there.
15. Compromise is a two-way street.  You should not be the one doing all the bending.
16. Keep up your personal growth.  Read.  Write.  Speak.  Question.  Challenge.
17. Be engaged in the present - be in the moment and spend quality time with him regularly.
18. Men build homes.  Boys shack up.
19. Be proactive - return romantic gestures.  Sometimes, take initiative in planning dates, surprise presents, etc...
20. Allow your woman's intuition to save you from heartache.