How I spent my summer vacation

This week marks the beginning of my fifth month living in Chicago. It's also the conclusion of my second week working since I've been here.

I knew we were taking a big risk, leaving my position at a great agency in Boston to move halfway across the country to a city where I knew almost no one in my field, during a period of the highest unemployment rate in 26 years.

Guess what? It was hard. And it took at least four times as long as I thought it would. I'll admit, there were times when it seemed like I would never find the right job, or worse, that I would never find a job. This summer was one of the most trying transitions I've ever been through.

Of course, this story has a happy ending now: I have recently started working with a bunch of really smart people in a position that I find fun and challenging, at a company that I think really has it together. I am very happy, and my first Chicago autumn has just begun.

So this seems like a good time to reflect on what I learned from my summer of being an unemployed person...

1. How to Get By With Less
No more restaurants. No new clothes. No cab rides, takeout, hair appointments, or liquor. We stayed home a lot this summer, cooked our own meals three times a day, and enforced a complete hiatus on all non-critical purchases. It was a major shock to my system.

Everyone knows, obviously, that uncertain economic times will force you to reevaluate what you consider a necessity versus a luxury, but few of us ever really have to put this into action. It's uncomfortable, for most of us, to even think about it. Try this thought experiment: How much money did you spend just on food this month... and what would you do if you had to cut that amount by 75%? Not pleasant.

What surprised me in the end was how quickly I did become accustomed to this new lifestyle. I developed thoughtful routines. I ate a more consistently balanced diet than ever before. I found responses to boredom and malaise that didn't cost money. Over time, I went from feeling "poor" to just feeling normal. J.D. at Get Rich Slowly has a wonderful series exploring how money has more to do with psychology than with math - and I absolutely believe that nothing has made a bigger positive difference in my financial psychology than spending four months with no income whatsoever. Which leads me to...

2. How to Live With Someone Else
I have had what I gather is a fairly non-traditional engagement up to this point. Until we moved here, my fiance and I lived on opposite coasts. We had never lived with each other - in fact, in the seven years since we met, we had never even lived in the same city for more than six weeks. This move would have required an enormous adjustment for any two people in a relationship... but in our case, we were signing up for total immersion, and total interdependence, from moment one.

The immediate advantages of this were clear, though... We got to be involved in each other's daily routine in a way that most couples are rarely, if ever, able to: having breakfast together every morning, jogging in the afternoons, accompanying one another on errands and advising each other on creative projects, blogging in the sunroom and doing LSAT problems at the beach. Measured in quality time alone, we were the luckiest people on earth.

But we also had to rely on each other like never before, in a lot of unfamiliar and uncomfortable ways. Being self-sufficient and relatively hands-off in the manner of your typical urban, dual-income pre-marrieds was not an option. Unaccustomed to being so bound together, this was not easy for either us. But it taught me a lot about Nick and his character: his incredible strength, intelligence, generosity, and faith. It proved to me that we will make it together "in good times and in bad." And it made me aware, and grateful, every day, that I have found someone I think is truly the perfect partner for me. And on that note...

3. How to Be Happy Now
I did a LOT of reading this summer. In addition to a few plays, several novels, hundreds of articles, and about a thousand blog posts, I also read just about the entire contents of our self-help shelf - including re-reading some favorites by Dale Carnegie, John Gottman and Deborah Tannen. More on those in the future, I'm sure.

I also read, for the first time, Richard Carlson's supermarket-bookshelf classic, Don't Sweat the Small Stuff... and It's All Small Stuff. This book is pop-philosophy at its most pedestrian, but it had an enormous effect on me for probably exactly that reason. If self-help books were food, this one wouldn't even be food, it would be one of those quick-sustenance packets of gel the volunteers hand you at mile 10 of a half-marathon. It's both easy and necessary. The book has 100 chapters, each 2-3 paragraphs long. You can read the whole thing in one roundtrip el ride, and you can start applying the principles before you even get off the train - because this is a book not about what to do, but about how to think. Consider: 36. See the Innocence and 66. Think of What You Have Instead of What You Want. Read; think; done! But the chapter I carried most consistently through the last couple of months is the one I'll share here:

69. Be Happy Where You Are

Sadly, many of us continually postpone our happiness - indefinitely. It's not that we consciously set out to do so, but that we keep convincing ourselves, "Someday I'll be happy." We tell ourselves we'll be happy when our bills are paid, when we get out of school, get our first job, a promotion. We convince ourselves that life will be better after we get married, have a baby, then another. Then we are frustrated that the kids aren't old enough - we'll be more content when they are. After that, we're frustrated that we have teenagers to deal with. We will certainly be happy when they are out of that stage. We tell ourselves that our life will be complete when our spouse gets his or her act together, when we get a nicer car, are able to go on a nice vacation, when we retire. And on and on and on!

Meanwhile, life keeps moving forward. The truth is, there's no better time to be happy than right now. If not now, when? Your life will always be filled with challenges. It's best to admit this to yourself and decide to be happy anyway. One of my favorite quotes comes from Alfred S'Souza. He said, "For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life." This perspective has helped me to see that there is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way.