Leisure Time

Actually, "Leisure Time" was supposed to be the name of my post that I was writing this afternoon, but then my sister dropped by unexpectedly and checked her email and she shut down Firefox before I could post. Damn! And it was a good post. So I'll give you the jist below, but I'm not really in the same mood, which I'll explain below.

Originally, I was waxing poetic about how much leisure time I have. We moved back to Denver from D.C. about a month ago, and I quit a decent job to do so. Not a job I loved, but a decent job. So now I don't have a job. And while I'm stressing about money, it does have its benefits. I have a ton of leisure time. I'm sleeping like 9 or 10 hours a night. I'm taking the dogger on long walks. I'm keeping up with laundry. And to top it all off, I'm working out a ton, and eating at home, mostly healthy meals. All of this is leading to what I'd like to think is a fairly healthy lifestyle, except of course the stress about not having a job.

But it begs the question. When I do have a job, when I have to work 45+ hours a week and am stressed and tired, will I keep up these good habits? Will I get 9 or 10 hours of sleep a night? Will I take the dogger on long walks? Will I work out and eat healthy meals at home? I'll do my best, but I know it'll be much more difficult. Sheer lack of leisure time will prevent me from doing all of these things I'm doing now.

I feel good about my new habits. I feel like I can keep them up. But it scares me, thinking about change. I have a plan for now, and that's to plan my day, down to every last minute. I will make time to work out and cook healthy meals. It will happen. I just have to believe in that.

Of course now that I'm home from happy hour and nachos this all kind of sounds like bullshit, considering my healthy habits seem to have flown out the window as soon as an invitation to go out comes along. But I'm taking it in stride, because I did work out today, and all of my other meals were healthy, and I'll make good decisions tomorrow. It's a give and take. It's making good decisions in the wake of bad ones. One night of beer and nachos won't ruin me. I have healthy habits to fall back on to, and tomorrow I'll get up and eat my yogurt for breakfast and do my workout and I'll be all the better for it. My healthy habits are here to stay.