As many of you know, 2 months ago I quit my job to pursue a mini-retirement, and boy has it been busy! I never thought unemployment would keep me so active. I ceased nearly all online communications (ie. twitter and blogging) in order to re-assess my life’s direction, and now I’m finally getting back to the grind.

Here’s a brief recap of what I’ve been doing. I’ll go into more detail, however, on individual blog posts.

July 1 – Flew to Kansas City to surprise my brother for his birthday. I hung out with my brother almost exclusively for a few days, which was a blast. A few highlights of the birthday bash include convincing my brother’s law school friends that my name was Waltham and getting harassed by brother’s girlfriend for drinking and driving…under the influence of water (in her defense, she was slightly inebriated and thought I was walking around alcohol). July 4th was lame considering it got rained out, but such is life.

July 6th – 11th – Flew to Southern California to spend quality time with my parents. Quality time interspersed with hectic real estate craziness, as my parents are trying to find a nice home out there amidst the region’s financial ruin. What was amazing to me was seeing how many foreclosed properties had been destroyed by previous tenants as they rushed to rip out all appliances, faucets, toilets, etc before they got kicked out. Never have I seen so many nice houses that have been so tattered. I also played golf a few times at some of the resort courses out there (PGA West Palmer Private and Citrus) and managed to shoot an 86 and an 84, which is all the more impressive considering I hardly ever play golf any more.

July 12th – July 16th – Back in Kansas City to relax…except I didn’t relax…at all. Every morning by about 9:30, I was up with a cup of coffee analyzing the financial markets trying to investigate options mispricing and how to exploit this for financial gain. More about this in another blog update.  I literally didn’t see any friends during this period, regretfully, but I did spend some more good time with my parents.

July 17th  - July 18th – The Lake of the Ozarks! For those of you who don’t know, the lake is the largest man-made non-flood control lake in the US, and despite being very “country” is rather charming. We got to see our good family friends, the Naylors, and enjoyed tubing, sunbathing, swimming and jet skiing. This was my first time actually driving the jet ski (if driving is the correct verb).  I also managed to get hideously sun burned, which looked horrible given my already red complexion .

July 19th – While I was supposed to come back to Boston on this night, Southwest airlines felt differently. Southwest decided to strand me in Chicago, and informed me that any hotel expense would be “out of pocket”. Luckily, I have a good friend in Chicago named Ed who was happy to take in a homeless man for a night. He offered me a comfortable couch and some homemade beer, which, for a 26 year old kid, is all I really need.  The following evening I left to come back to Boston.

July 20th – August 5th – Back in Boston, back to market research, back to freaking out about my future but calmed by the fact that I still have another month to figure things out.

August 6th – Sept 1st – Europe! Specifically, I was travelling to Bulgaria to attend my girlfriend’s brother’s wedding. Bulgaria in and of itself deserves a HUGE blog post, so you’ll have to wait.

Now I am officially back Stateside and I’m trying to figure out what to do with my life. I’ve got a lot of options, but unfortunately, I’m struck with the paradox of choice! Do I get my MBA? Do I investigate hedge funds more? Do I stay with the startup path?

I’ll keep you posted as I figure things out.