Well, so-I did it.

I was offered a job today. I accepted. HOORAY. This is a bit of a dream job for me. I've been applying with this company for about a year and a half, and first started actually talking to humans there last June, I think.

After not working FT for 10 months, I am nervous! I know this position is going to be a BIG challenge-the work load will be heavy, and I will be busier and have more meetings than I ever have. It's a challenge I am definitely up to, but still makes me nervous.

PLUS, I have never worked in an office this big. Seriously, there are like 2000 people in the facility where I'll be working. Instead of being the only meeting planner or one of a few, I'll be one of several. I'm entering the (much faster) pace of corporate meetings. I'm thrilled and excited and so ready to do this.

I am not patient. It's genetic. But patience and persistence paid off here. I got one of (in my opinion) the very few jobs in Austin worth waiting for. I've said it before-there's just not a lot here, outside of state associations, which don't float my boat since I've worked in international and national associations. A state association would feel like a step back at this point.

Anyway...yay! :)

Bitchpanic about hitting the one year mark...

OK, it's not *that* close yet, but we all know how time flies...even though I continued to do some work w/my employer in Chicago after I moved back to Austin, I count the beginning of July as the "official" start of my job search/period of unemployment. Even though I started looking for jobs before that, that date is good because that's when I actually arrived back in Austin.

9.5 months later, I have applied for over 100 jobs, had lots of interviews, and zero offers. Which I am pretty okay with, because I have had lots of interviews for positions that I thought would be "okay" jobs, but not really something I was totally jazzed about.

I guess I'm just feeling blue this week because I had an interview Thursday last week, and one on Friday and, you know, I want to know NOW if there are second interviews in my future. Both of these interviews were with companies I'm really interested in. Patience is a virtue, and it's not something I was blessed with (I blame the Davison genes).

I've also been thinking a lot about what happens if I reach the one year point? What do I do then? Get sympathy cards in the mail from everybody who didn't hire me? ;) No...but I might have to seriously reevaluate some things. Beg my husband to move somewhere that holds more job opportunities in what I'm looking for? Give up being a meeting planner? I don't know, and I hope that is a milestone that I do NOT reach.

Things I miss about working.

I mean, besides the obvious (the paycheck).

1) Going to Starbucks for a little break. Woe is me if I don't work walking distance from Starbucks.

2) After work happy hour (which I never did as well as in Chicago, ha!).

Of course, these aren't the ONLY things...but I DO look forward to them, I won't lie!

(Edited to add) 3) Awesome people like Fiore and Trisha. Duh, how did I not remember to include this originally?

I wish I had something funny...

To post about like "Held Hostage in the Nail Salon", but I don't. But at some point, the job search has become humorous. I don't know if that started when I had to mail in a job application for a job I found over the weekend, or what. Yes, I'm still frustrated and want a job, but something about this just makes me laugh. I don't know if it's finding out who got hired for positions I got looked over for or what. I think that's definitely part of it. Or finding out that people "on the inside" of the state association side of things can just basically get a phone call saying "Do you want to come back to work for us?" without even having posted a job? That, too. Whatever. I'm an awesome meeting planner and whoever doesn't realize that is a dummy. So ha. :)

Oh, yippee.

Last week I got a job rejection letter in the mail. It didn't even faze me. My husband and I were standing in the kitchen when I opened it. I read it, then said "Another rejection". Then I ripped off the top part with the address on it (to shred) and threw the letter in the recycle bin, and then went to the bedroom to use the shredder.

I went back into the kitchen and he hugged me and said he was sorry. The thing was, I wasn't sad. This job would probably have been enjoyable in lots of ways, but it wasn't 100% what I wanted to do. So it really didn't bother me.

Fast-forward to today. I had an interview a couple of weeks ago, on a Monday. That particular week I was pretty busy because I had gotten a piece of contract business and was working a convention. So, scheduling that interview was a little bit crazy. I was set to finish at 1 PM on the Wednesday of that week, and the person interviewing me wanted to come in at 1:30. Well, that wasn't good for several reasons. 1) What if I needed to stay later? I didn't want to bail on the client. 2) The drive time from downtown to this office would have been at least 30 minutes. 3) I'd not be looking my best and I wouldn't be mentally sharp after 3 days at a conference. So we scheduled the interview for before I had to be downtown Monday morning.

This organization made it sound like they wanted to make a decision that week, so I kind of went out of my way to be there Monday morning. Fast-forward to the next week, which was last week. I hadn't heard anything from them and wanted to follow up/write off this possibility. I e-mailed my contact and they were still doing interviews? WTF? Why was it SO URGENT that I went in the week before?

Anyway, I got another e-mail from my contact today saying that they offered the position yesterday to somebody that interviewed on Friday, and she accepted. That it was a very hard decision, blah blah. And again, I'm not really sad even though this position was more along the lines of what I really wanted to do. I still didn't feel like it was 100% right for me.

And I wonder if that position that's 100% right for me is even out there. I don't even want to bring up the interview that I had the same week. That was totally weird. I mean, I know the right position exists, because I've had it before. Even though I had a love/hate relationship with my last employer in Chicago, I miss it and it was pretty close to 100% what I wanted to do. I just know how few and far between those types of positions are here in Austin, and it totally bums me out. More than getting a rejection letter does.

Thinking about life...

I am sorting through receipts, trying to get our financial house in order and wow, it's causing all sorts of deep thoughts.

First of all, there are lots of receipts for places in Chicagoland that I miss. Portillo's, Sally's, Gibson's, Bongo Room (Ok, so they are all restaurants and bars, but I even got nostalgic for the dry cleaner because he carried my stuff out TO THE CAR for me).

And also, the seemingly never-ending job search. I had an interview last week but I won't find anything out about that position for another two weeks or so. I had one interview at the beginning of February. Still nothing from that. I e-mailed HR on that one yesterday. Then a call today for one on Monday. So, it's at least going SOMEWHERE, but not as fast as I'd hoped. Obviously. Otherwise I wouldn't still be writing about looking for a job.

The thing is, I am going to make a WHOLE LOT LESS money here than I did in Chicagoland. And yes, it costs less to live here. That is true. From all the COL (cost of living) calculators I looked at when we moved up there and also recently, it's about 25% higher in the Chicago area than it is here. But some of these positions pay even more than 25% less. And it's so frustrating to me. I like money. I want to live in a cool neighborhood, like Tarrytown. And I think I was underpaid in Chicago. So I don't really like this difference. UGH. So frustrating.

Such is life, right? I'll have to hope for Scott to get a raise! :)

The Governor and the Coyote

I just got this from a former colleague in IL and thought it was too good not to share.

ILLINOIS:
The Governor of Illinois is jogging with his dog along a nature trail.

A coyote jumps out and attacks the Governor's dog, then bites the Governor.

1. The Governor starts to intervene, but reflects upon the movie Bambi" and then realizes he should stop because the coyote is only doing what is natural.

2. He calls animal control . Animal Control captures the coyote and bills the State $200 testing it for diseases and $500 for relocating it.

3. He calls a veterinarian. The vet collects the dead dog and bills the State $200 testing it for diseases.

4. The Governor goes to hospital and spends $3,500 getting checked for diseases from the coyote and on getting his bite wound bandaged.

5. The running trail gets shut down for 6 months while Fish & Game conducts a $100,000 survey to make sure the area is now free of dangerous animals.

6. The Governor spends $50,000 in state funds implementing a "coyote awareness program" for residents of the area.

7. The State Legislature spends $2 million to study how to better treat rabies and how to permanently eradicate the disease throughout the world.

8. The Governor's security agent is fired for not stopping the attack. The State spends $150,000 to hire and train a new agent with additional special training re: the nature of coyotes.

9. PETA protests the coyote's relocation and files a $5 million suit against the State.


TEXAS:

The Governor of Texas is jogging with his dog along a nature trail. A Coyote jumps out and attacks his dog.

1. The Governor shoots the coyote with his State-issued pistol and keeps jogging. The Governor has spent $0.50 on a .45 ACP hollow point cartridge.

2. The Buzzards eat the dead coyote.

And that, my friends, is why Illinois is broke and Texas is not.

This is even more amusing because the TX part is basically true:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/27/AR2010042705323.html