What I Would Miss When I Get a Job

There are positive sides to being unemployed. I'd written in my past post about three major effects that I personally have had. One of them had to do with spending time on things that I couldn't or wouldn't have been able to while working. When I was writing, I was referring to things that I wasn't doing much while working, such as studying non-work related matters and taking an inventory of my life. But lately I'm thinking that being able to spend more time on things that I was doing before, too, have some positive effects. For me, it's cooking, which I love.

When I was working, I often couldn't cook everyday: I didn't have the time. I would be too tired to cook or too hungry to spend time cooking. And when I did have the time and energy, I didn't have what I needed in my refrigerator because I didn't have time to do grocery shopping often enough. What I usually did was to cook a bunch of stuff during weekends to reheat during weekdays and to incorporate eating-out and preprocessed foods.

But now, oh my god, things in this area are just great. I get to go grocery shopping whenever I need. This means that I can cook and eat what I fancy at any given moment; I don't need to compromise based on what I can find in my refrigerator or pantry. It also means that I can get more fresh produce instead of going for frozen ones because I wouldn't need to worry about keeping them long in my refrigerator. And it's not just frozen food that I reduced; I drastically reduced using preprocessed foods as well. Instead, I'm making things from scratch, often trying out new ingredients. Overall, I'd say that I'm having a lot more variety of foods that are fresher and with less additives.

And I'm starting to see its positive effects: I feel healthy because I'm eating well. I feel happier because I love cooking and I get to enjoy meals more (there's a huge difference between eating reheated food and just-cooked food, let me tell you). Also, there are two more side-effects that I noticed: One is that my food expense is lower and the other is that the amount of garbage that I produce is smaller. They probably have to do with the reduction of preprocessed foods that I'm having, and it makes me feel really good that while I'm doing good to my body and my bank account, I'm also doing good to the environment.

I know I won't be able to continue spending so much time on cooking once I get a regular job. I would definitely miss this part of being unemployed. I wish there was an easy way to balance all these...