Life balance

When I was working from home and working as an Inside Support Specialist, I would work from 7 AM until 3:30 PM.  No commute, no one looking over my shoulder, no meetings.  However, I found that I was stagnating.  There were few opportunities to learn anything.  True, we would have a conference call where a manager or trainer would present new material but most of what they brought to us was irrelevant to what we did.  It was just something on their check list that they could say that they did.  I think I found out that even I can have too much time alone and I do learn from those around me more than I thought I did.  At the end of the day, I was done and free to do what I wanted.  It is funny that at that time I did not have much to do in the evenings.  Now that I have a lot of open time, as I am in transition, I have a number of things on my calendar and they all sort of happened at once.  I have a men's accountability group on Thursday nights and a Bible study at church every other Saturday.  Financial Peace University came to town for the first time and I have joined that so now my Tuesday nights are full from mid-February to early May.  I also am attending two career networking groups, both of which have some homework attached to them.  I joined a bird watching club at the local nature center.  My wife's work has also started a benefit that I am taking advantage of and that is a free pass to the city pool.  I find this all strange.  Before, I was under socialized and not getting much opportunity to do things in the community.  Now that I am looking for a good match in the work world and have lots of free time, I am doing all sorts of healthy things.  Why couldn't some of these things popped up when I was working from home?  I think it would have made me feel better about the life I had at that time.  Maybe I would have held on as I would have thought my life was in a better balance.  The life I am living now is the life I would choose to live if money were no object.  I would be active in the community and I would be active physically.  Also I would make steps to grow spiritually and personally.  The trick to continuing this is to find income without sacrificing time and energy.