The end of indulgence and sloth, and the beginning of self-discipline and focus

It's two weeks post Ironman and for a while there it was a somewhat distant and foggy memory. Did I really do that? I wish it had hurt for longer so I'd be reminded that it was an IRONMAN for god's sake. But unfortunately, I felt great three days later and the only lingering symptoms seem to be a very disrupted sleep pattern and about 10 days of utter starvation feelings every two hours on the dot. It was difficult to keep me fed enough, although I didn't necessarily want to eat a lot at each sitting. But rather, more like there was an 'ole in my bucket, dear Eliza, dear Eliza. And what that bucket was empty, watch out! The Marynator was on the hunt for food, any food.

I decided to take a couple of weeks off. No or little exercise, chilling with family and a day or so of doing utterly nothing. It's been great so far, but all good things must come to an end.

The thing I'm most proud of in my Ironman is that I had a plan and stuck to it. Truthfully, I was lucky - nothing went wrong, so I never had to test the plan. But still, the plan worked perfectly. So I'm going to apply the same kind of planning and focus to my job hunt.

1. First, I'll clean up the Mongoose, strap on the saddlebag and use it for tooling around and chores. How many birds am I killing with that? Exercise, saving gas $$, fresh air ...
2. Every day I'll toddle over to the library (on the Mongoose, natch!) to give myself a more 'office-like' environment for the job search.
3. Every day I'll either make a contact, apply for a job or line up some kind of volunteer opportunity/informational interview, read a book about careers/job hunting, work my network etc.
4. I'll volunteer at least once a week in a way that is interesting and furthers my exploration of a career in athletics and the underprivileged/disabled/vets/girls etc.
   
5. Every day I'll do something around the house or garden.
6. If I want to do something, I'll cut something else to pay for it.

We've been discussing what savings we can make and what's truly important to us. I want to go back to track, so we'll cut the cleaner (and I'll be the house cleaner - on the understanding that the rule of clearing away the clutter for the cleaners still applies!) to pay for that. We'll figure out something else for Team Z. Staying healthy and involved with our tri and running friends is too important to us to make those things the first to be cut. No more shoes and new clothes until I get a job. Sigh.

We'll see how it all goes.