Begin at the beginning...

This has been one crazy year.  Almost exactly 12 months ago I found out that my 70-year old manufacturing company was going to close down my facility.  At that point, everything in my life was tossed in the air like a deck of cards, and I'm finally starting to see how things are landing.

I've been lucky to have so much advance notice.  My job will end December 31, so I've had plenty of time to save, ponder and plan.  There were a lot of different options on the table, but when my then-boyfriend proposed to me in June my path started to get much clearer.  He lives in Florida, I live in Indiana.  Our options mostly focused around him moving here or me going there, and practicality soon made it obvious that I should go to Florida.  We married in October, it's now November, and I'll be moving down there in February after my job ends and I wrap up some loose ends.

One of those loose ends is enrolling in a very cool federal program that's going to allow me to go to school for FREE for two years and give me extended unemployment benefits during that entire time.  It's called Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) and it's designed for employees of manufacturing companies who lose their jobs due to businesses sending work out of the country.  

Sooo, my plan is to move to Florida, begin my life with my new husband, be an unemployed full-time student and hopefully emerge into a recovered job market in 2012.  I haven't been out of work for more than a month since I was 15 years old, so this is bound to be quite an adventure.  For the first few months, from February until the start of the fall semester in August, I'll be a complete lay-about.  I really want to fill those months with creative and enriching activities - and that's part of the inspiration for this blog.  I won't have anything interesting to write about if I spend all day watching Firefly.  Okay, that *would* make for at least one interesting post, but not every day!

Right now I'm entrenched in the details of moving: packing, painting, change-of-address notifications, etc.  By the time that's settled I want to have some goals to work on over the summer.  So far I'm thinking about studying Spanish, finishing a couple of history books that I've started twice, working out regularly and riding my motorcycle.  That sounds like a good start!  But now...back to packing.  Ugh.