Everyday I feel more and more grateful and appreciative of the fact that I have a job once again. Also, that not only do I have a job, but that it’s an improvement in nearly every way imagineable over the previous one. Fifteen minute commute in the morning and thirty minutes on the way home – compared to an hour in the morning and 1.5 hours on the way home – and that was when it wasn’t raining and traffic was light.
I have a lot to learn, and I’m working with some really smart people that do their jobs very well – again, quite different from my last employer.
Like many periods of our lives – once we complete something, or finish a section, rarely is there a breather – it’s more like the end of many West Wing episodes where President Bartlett says, “what’s next?” – and they move on. Sure, I was out of work for over 2 months – and it’s only my 1st week back – but it really does feel like – what’s the next thing we need to take care of? Many things were put on hold, cut back, and really to some degree, a dam was built to hold off the flood waters – now with a decent regular paycheck coming in, we can start to release the pressure that was building – and focus on new issues – or give the old ones more attention now that the cloud of unemployment isn’t hanging over our heads.
And while it’s easy to come off as arrogant, or obnoxious, or simply unsensitive to everyone who finds this blog because they’re unemployed and they typed “Filing for Unemployment in Georgia” into a google search and found us – believe me, I know that just because someone decided to take a chance on me, that also means that I really have to live up to whatever hype or truth I led them to believe about myself. So there is a great deal of work to be done.
On a different note – this is the 17th official full time job I’ve had so far this lifetime. Seriously. I’ve worked 17 full time jobs since I was… 17. And the number of jobs I’ve held longer than 2 years?
Zero.
good on you Mark! Industrious people (like ourselves) just never resign ourselves to the possiblity of living in a “box down by the river”. Whatever needs to get done, gets done. I’m glad you’ve found a good job and not just a stop gap to get you by..these are weird times. I’ll never forget when my best friend from high school got herself into an IT job on a wing and prayer, and with really no relevant experience..she came home at lunch to take me to the airport and couldn’t believe she spent the whole morning crawling around “pulling cables” but she did what had to get done to get a job. She’s in Phoenix by the way. Must be something in the water that builds strong willed people there 🙂