My First Month in Hawaii! (Aka how does this relaxing thing work? )

Home sweet home!

Well, I made it! I have lived in Hawaii for a month now. My monsters made it too with no issue. Oliver is enjoying having extra humans around, but Svinney still thinks Bill is going to eat him for dinner, and runs away if Bill gets too close. He aggressively snuggles me though. Only me.

I am his and he is mine.

I’ve been settling in okay. I made some friends and I’m enjoying time with the husband. In my first week here I managed to lock myself out of the house without shoes or my phone, and I got lost. Great times! I’ve spent most of my time trying to relax and not blow through my savings. I spend my days wandering around North Shore, day drinking, and trying out Pinterest recipes.

I’m also looking for work. We’re lucky enough that I don’t NEED a job right now, so I can take my time and find the right fit. The problem is that I don’t know how to take a break. I was bored and looking for a job on day 3 (retail, corporate, you name it). I’ve never had the luxury to just relax, so now that I can, I don’t know how! I realized that a lot of my identity is based around what I do, and now that I’m jobless it’s like who am I???

I’ve spent so much time NOT failing at my hustle that I COMPLETELY fail at chilling! This somehow feels like a worse failure, because it’s like I suck at doing NOTHING, which is like baseline existence. If you suck at doing SOMETHING,  you stop doing that thing and do something else. When you suck at baseline existence, what then?

I’ve been working since I was 16. I was at my last job (tax appraiser) for 8 years. On top of my job in appraisal, I got accepted into grad school to get my Masters of Public Health; I was planning to do the work/school dance until I got my Masters, then switch careers entirely to public health. Then I switched gears YET AGAIN and spent the better part of last year planning a wedding and the move, which meant exorbitant amounts of stress on top of my already busy schedule. (“Just keep swimming” was my daily mantra)

Now that I’m here and life has slowed down tremendously, I’m faced with the overwhelming question of what do I do now?

What do you do AFTER you achieve the dream you worked so hard for?

For now, here are some beach pics, because there are worse places to have an identity crisis.

Bellows Beach