What Do You Do All Day?

As a continuation of my last post, yes, I do have a job now. Yes, I am at home all day. Yes, I work from home--as you may have gathered. I finished student teaching in November and didn't want to fight for a mid-year teaching position, and when this opportunity presented itself, it felt right. I am now working as an Assistant Assessment Coordinator for a consulting company. Let me translate; this basically means I look at assessments from the top officers of companies (restaurants like Cheesecake Factory, Kimberly Clark, Walgreen's. . . to name a few), which ask the same questions to multiple executives in order to assess perceptions of the company along with strengths and weaknesses to effectively pinpoint how the company can improve. I go through these and look for similar responses and create categories so that when the report goes back to the company, they can easily digest the common response patterns. I also edit these assessments (there are multiple kinds) for grammar and occasionally edit the website for grammar and formatting. Once in a while, I write press releases to go on the website. My part time work hours vary depending on when deadlines are and gives me flexibility (which I love and dislike at the same time because I never know what I can plan on). It is fun to see my English major skills at work in the business world--ie. looking for common themes in an 800 page Dickens novel and grouping them all up and analyzing them in a 20 page paper and transferring that to looking at fifty business assessment responses for similar patterns. So that is what I do all day, sit at a computer and save the corporate world one stroke at a time (not really). This job truly has been a blessing, but I miss the fulfillment of teaching--nothing can compare to that. When I am not working, you can find me taking a walk with my dear friend Becca and her two kids, running around the neighborhood, doing laundry, gardening, visiting with my laurels, cleaning my house, or baking/cooking. This life I am living is so much slower than my life has probably ever been, yet it allows me to keep up with things at home so when Ben comes home, we don't have to do chores all night (well, other than more gardening). This job was the perfect fit for our lives right now, and even though I crave more human interaction throughout my days, I guess it's good to get a taste of life with less. I used to be so busy that I had no time to think; I was so heavily involved with my callings, institute councils, masters classes and homework, work, socializing and dating, and now life is much more simple. I am sure it won't last like this forever--but--I guess this is giving me an opportunity to find and focus on things that matter most. This is what I do all day: I am trying to embrace life without the fluff, while there is no fluff, and find joy in the journey.