"Write when you get work" is what my mom used to say to us when we were heading back to college after one of our breaks. It was meant tongue and cheek but it popped into my head as I am about to embark on a new journey and join the ranks of the employed once again. As hard as it is to fathom that I've been off for 15 months, I also cannot believe where the time went. I mean I was busy. It's not as if I was just hanging out watching Regis and Kelly at 9, The View at 10, my "stories" all afternoon while waiting for Ellen to come on at 3 (ok, MAYBE I stayed home a few days but I was busy most days) . For example, I took on a couple of contract jobs so at a minimum I could brush up on my social skills before going back to work full time. I tortured myself selling church calendars for 4 months which I am convinced earned me direct access to the gates of heaven. (Up to this point I've been concerned that my soul wouldn't actually leave the coffin but I am confident now I will at least get to plead my case to St. Peter). Can I say the pain and suffering I went through selling calendars compares to the pain and suffering of Jesus hanging on the cross? Yes, I think I can. But, I plan on confirming with Him if I get past Pete. Now, there's still a good chance I'll get rejected and head straight down to stoke the fire in hell while awaiting my friends but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

From the calendars, I moved into a banking environment for 2 1/2 months to do a mindless job filling in a database. There was absolutely no challenge to the task I was performing but I wasn't on the phone getting screamed at so it was a welcome change. Plus, the bank served another purpose. Once I was back in the financial world I started to feel like I was ready to get back to work. I updated my status on LinkedIn and could not believe how many of my former colleagues were working in the area. People were calling to do lunch and go out for happy hour. Suddenly, I felt like the most popular girl on LaSalle Street. For those couple months I was Mary Tyler Moore...I was gonna make it after all.

As mind-numbing as the work was at the bank it provided me with a lot of fodder. I won't speak for the entire floor I worked on but I will say 70% of the employees had not updated their wardrobe or hair styles since 1989. There was easily a month's worth of episodes for TLC's "What Not to Wear". From the over-sized eyeglasses, the perms and the blouses with shoulder pads I thought it would be best if some of these people got laid off just so they could watch TV and notice things have changed since the "Growing Pains" years. And there was one woman in complete denial that she had gone up a pant size in the past 2 decades. It was so uncomfortable to watch her parade around the office with her entire inseam tucked into her crevices. One afternoon I actually saw her bottom eat her khakis as she fought to pull them out. And, to top it off she was wearing a thong! Made me really happy I'm not a pair of pants.

The banking job served its purpose and I was able to secure a permanent job. I took 3 weeks off before starting and there was truly a difference in how I felt. As much as I enjoyed being off, I realized things were becoming very familiar now that Spring had arrived. I was back walking on the lakefront, taking pictures for tourists and giving directions to the museums. I watched the bulldozer spread the sand on the beaches in anticipation of the summer season. The buoys were being dropped in Monroe Harbor waiting for the boats to arrive. And the warm weather had all the outdoor cafes open for the fabulous people-watching lunches in the Gold Coast. I love sitting outside watching perfectly coiffed ladies walking dogs the size of ferrets. Or, the old men peacocking arm in arm with jail bait 30 years their junior hoping they get back home before their Viagra wears off.

Then, as I sat for my last lunch before going back to work I spotted "exercise man". He's a tall, lanky guy in his mid 50s who wears the kind of smile that tells you he's probably just a little bit crazy. He walks briskly in his daisy duke shorts and wife-beater while tugging on a resistance band over his head. Until I saw him, I think I was a little worried I might miss something if I was tied to a desk all day. But once I spotted him, I realized I had seen it all and it was time to get back to my real life. Plus, I started to worry people might recognize me. Not that I'm famous, but I do have a routine. I've been walking from my house to the north side for over a year and I'm willing to bet since I'm starting to see the same people I might get recognized as well. So I think the timing is perfect that I'm heading back to an office Monday through Friday. I'll be back here on the weekends but frankly, I'm just not sure I want anyone pointing at me and saying "there goes the streetwalker".

Today's EiPod: "Working for the Weekend", Loverboy

What happened to 2009? I feel like it was only yesterday when my job was eliminated, I was planning a road trip and had a whole year to look forward to new challenges and positive changes. Don't get me wrong, all of that happened, it just feels like it went so quickly. Before going back to work in the fall, I knew I had some projects I still had to finish and although I had the entire summer to get to them, I waited until the 11th hour to do them. By the way, if I haven't already made this point clear, selling church calendars was by far the worst job I've ever had. After being verbally abused by funeral home directors because their calendars weren't delivered or they had a typo, I have made the decision I will be cremated. Anyway, I've been off for the holidays and am heading back to work again on Wednesday. This time I'm going to work at a bank in another temporary assignment for the next several months. But, of course I realized I had another unfinished project staring me in the face. It's not like I had to install French doors or sand the wood floors. I had to clean out my storage unit. How hard could that be and why did it take me so long to get to it? It's only a 4x6 cage. But I waited until yesterday when I un-friended Christmas (I love that "un-friend" term...it's got so many uses). And that means I procrastinated 369 days before I attempted this project and I'm not even happy with the results. How could that happen? Do I have a time management issue? I wonder if that's why haven't landed a full-time job. I should probably contact some of my previous bosses and delve into that subject little deeper. Maybe I'll do that later.

So now it's 2010. Which means it's time to set goals. I've set some personal goals already but have a few more to think about. Now, I'm not foolish enough to write them down here as the 3 of you reading this may try to track down my progress and it's hard enough to be accountable to me. Plus, you've seen my procrastination numbers already so I don't need the added pressure.

For the past several years I had "goals dinner" with a few of my friends. We all kept our personal goals but thought it would be fun to develop some goals that would be a stretch for us as individuals. After a few glasses of wine, the creative juices started to flow and we always came up with a few interesting objectives. I think we typically threw in the generic "do something good for others" which can be done in many ways and we each found our own path on that one. More challenging goals we came up with were ones such as "hand out your business card to a stranger", "mend a broken relationship", "go to a bar alone and order a drink" (something we gals were never comfortable doing), and, one of my all-time favorites "look like Diane Keaton in Something's Gotta Give". This wasn't meant to be shallow. We all saw the movie and when we found out she didn't have a body double for the scene when Jack Nicholson cut off her turtle neck, frankly it was a little embarrassing that she was 53 years old with a 35 year old body and we were 40 years old with a...well, never mind how old our bodies looked...we just didn't look as good as her. So, each year we would set out to try and accomplish the group goals and would share our victories with each other. We'd make a call after our "solo drink" or if we handed out our business card. I have to say, the Diane Keaton goal was a bit tricky and by the time we met the following year for the new goals dinner, none of us had met that one. It was a little tougher than it appeared. I mean, she was single like us but I'm willing to bet she spent loads of money on personal trainers and chefs. And, we chose to spend our money on wonderful dinners or sitting on the beach watching the sunset for 2 hours sharing bottles of wine, bricks of cheese, sleeves of crackers and 100 pistachios. I think we just had different priorities and that's why she had that body and we had all the fun. The following year at our goals dinner we decided to keep the Body by Diane on the list because we were sure we'd get to it. Or, as sure as you can get after a few glasses of wine. But alas, when another year flew by and we found ourselves reviewing the previous year's goals, we knew by looking at each other that we had failed once again. Finally, we decided to take the pressure off and tweak the goal to simply say "get to your ideal weight". I thought it was a nice compromise and didn't really highlight the fact that we procrastinated for 730 days before giving up.

Now that I'm a little older and hopefully a bit wiser, the next time I'm at one of these dinners I'm going to write the goals before I take one sip of wine. For example, if I were more on the ball, I would craft the "Something's Gotta Give" goal a bit differently. I think I would write a nice note to Diane Keaton and ask her if she'd like to make it one of her goals to try to get my body. And, while I was at it, I'd ask her to take a stab at cleaning my storage unit.

Today's EiPod: "Don't Wait Too Long", Madeleine Peyroux