…Isn’t a question I have the luxury of asking any more. Two months ago, my husband and I picked up our lives and moved from the O.C. to the Denver metro area in Colorado. We love it here — despite all the snow — except for one thing: we’re both having more trouble than we expected finding jobs. It’s not for lack of trying, let me assure you, but whether it be because of the time of year or some other factor, we haven’t been wholly successful.

The good news is that we planned for this eventuality; we moved with several months’ expenses saved. The bad news is that we are rapidly coming to the end of those savings.

As of last week, however, I went from being woefully unemployed to having a contract position with a publisher in town. The job will last at least a few more weeks and will provide us with enough income that we can both keep looking for the right job without having to freak out about things like paying rent and feeding the cat.

Unfortunately, my first week back at work completely threw me off! All my best intentions about exercising, eating healthfully, and keeping the house neat and organized flew out the window as soon as I was back in the cube life, doing the daily grind.

It was a huge shift for me, going from having unlimited free time back into the working world, and it reminded me why all of these things are a challenge in the first place.

I’m just rounding out week two of being back at work, and I’m happy to report that I’m beginning to get back into the swing of things. It’s all about choices, and I’m proud to say that I’ve been choosing wisely this week: I’ve been eating a lot more fruits and vegetables after reading “Unhappy Meals” last weekend, and the Husband and I plan to go to Wild Oats this weekend to stock up on healthy whole foods; I finished the book I checked out from the library — BEFORE the due date! — by choosing to read in the evenings instead of watching TV shows I don’t care about (you’ll never get me to give up Heroes, but that’s another story…); my dear Husband has been taking on a lot of the household chores during the day, but I’ve made a point of cleaning up the kitchen and doing my before bed routine — at least an hour before I’m ready for bed, so that I’m not too sleepy to do it!

And that’s really all it is, isn’t it? The steps to becoming beautiful are just baby steps, the steps to whole living building blocks that gradually grow into something monumental. So, for now, I’ll take what I can get and celebrate the little victories every day.

Time to send out some more resumés!