Turning Left or Right?

Driving towards Los Angeles, if you take the 22 West exit with the intention of going into Long Beach near Alamitos Bay, the first exit is Studebaker to the right and then you turn left. At the end of Studebaker, you come to 2nd Street. You can't drive forward anymore because there is no more road. It's a fenced-off field of scrub, weeds and random palm trees next to the San Gabriel River Wash that leads out to the Pacific. In order to continue your trip, you have to make a decision: turn left or right.

And I find this is kind of a parallel story to what my life is like right now. I worked in finance and in the mortgage industry. I  took a road that was different, working in the file room as a contractor/Supervisor for a year and a half at USCIS, but it was at the end of that organization's five- year contract, really due to no fault of my own and just shear decisions to retain those with the more tenure, I came to its intersection in the last week of  November of last year when I was laid off for a brief moment.  I have to think that it was my boss that saved me from the unemployment rolls temporarily for another 6 months due to others retiring and moving on to other more permanent roles at USCIS in Adjudication, Naturalization, and Asylum. (And I'm not convinced in the least that his subordinate was enthused about any of these changes/decisions in the least. Which is an entirely another discussion I won't get into now.) I thought I was going to go drive down a different road turning left or right which I was OK with, but I  also came to terms with the fact that I knew my health was paramount, so work gave me this shitty narrow path with a significant pay cut and what I find out now is crappier health insurance coverage (worse than I even had when I paid for it myself on the CA Healthcare Exchange) to keep traveling on their path. Don't think that I'm not grateful, I am, I just don't like what I've become at this point and I have no control over it. My boss does. Until the end of the contract or until I get a better job, whichever comes first.

It's the beginning of March and I want this to be over on my terms and not be laid off on May 2nd. I've been applying to jobs that pay more than what I'm earning now just to have the satisfaction and be able to say that," I'll be O.K... my new job pays more than this place", and to build up my self-confidence knowing that I've made changes mid-career and have come back from being jobless before and I can do it again.

At this point in my life though, I'm fairly cynical and retrospective about work which doesn't really help and the economy is one that has tamped down on hourly wages hard. I've sat on the other side of that hiring desk trying to figure out how well that candidate can fill the role. Do you pick someone with a degree who had never did the role before and train or do you hire someone with experience and pay for it? The decision is out of my hands.

And I'm wary about recruiters. The last time I got involved with one of those,  I took a job in Simi Valley as a federal contractor to Fannie Mae right after Countrywide defaulted and Bank of America was buying them but not before the credit crunch of Oct '08. It was a strange time to be where I was and watch it all happen.

I've been contacted by no less than three recruiters. None of the first two seem sustaining. The third one is intriguing, but can I make that hard left turn and continue on?

It's June!

Last year, I was fully expecting that now I'd be recovering from my third major surgery battling Crohn's disease, but the medication the GI doctor prescribed has helped and gave me a tool to use when I'm feeling bad. After having a colonoscopy and finding out that the pain I was experiencing was from an ulcer instead of advanced Crohn's, I decided that it's probably a better idea for me to focus on doing things that make me feel well, eating well and de-stressing my life.

So part of that de-stressing regime has been looking for a job closer to home. I like driving, but having to drive in LA traffic to and from work four days a week (Monday's I work remotely from Brea) is a time waster and it's frustrating when it doesn't keep moving. I live 42 miles from work. In no traffic, it takes me 35 minutes to get to work. But in traffic, it can take anywhere from 1-2 hours to get to work. And, yes, I've tried rideshare commuting, but to be honest, it doesn't make that much difference in LA traffic. The solution is working closer to home. Immediately when I started to look for a new job, there were two different MERS positions that were posted and I got a telephone interview for the one I applied to, but found out that they couldn't meet my salary requirements. So I'm still looking.

Once the senior on my team came back to work after she had recovered from surgery, I scheduled my two week vacation. Last year, for vacation, I flew to DC and stayed with my aunt in VA and while my uncle was in a nursing home recovering from a heart attack. I drove up to Massachusetts and New York to meet up with family among other thing. I accumulated a lot of PTO between then and May planning on that LOA, but I didn't need it, so I had to take a vacation.

So instead of going back to the East coast this year, I'm having a stay-cation for the summer of 2015. The first week, I'm proud to say I did nothing. Absolutely nothing. And it felt good. The second week, I'm attacking the last of the floor project that was so rudely interrupted by December's broken wrist that I got from falling at work. Oh, and by the way, that infatuation for my therapist went absolutely no where. Which I'm kind of glad about because the new normal after menopause has not been any fun either. So I'm moving furniture and prepping the floor tomorrow.

I'm not so perfect after all

To be honest I never was perfect. Nobody is. Perfect is subjective. At work, I have been auditing the data that goes into a database and it was hell as well as heart wrenching to find out that even with all my diligence, it's not right. I am but a conduit to the errors that come from other people in other departments. As my boss would say, "garbage in / garbage out". I suspected there was a problem. My mood was down-to-work and focused as much as I could bear without literary wanting to scream at the top of my lungs in order to release my frustration. Once it was turned in, I couldn't get it to signed off quick enough and then the client started calling me.

And then after I could clear my head of the most important self-audit I performed for work, then that's when I decided that there was no qualified candidate applying for the vacant supervisors position and dreading that I would have to either train a co-worker or someone from the outside who has had supervisor experience but that would be useless to the 'processors' in the department, I applied.

My interview was Thursday with HR. I left my competition in the dust. My resume is so linear and focused, pretty much any company who was looking for what I do would at least take a look at it. There is good and bad with any job that you do, but in this new role, I bring more knowledge, technique and experience than the sum of my competition. Besides, it would be easier to hire a business analyst to do what I do with that database  than clone me.

It could be considered mid to late January and now it finally feels like winter in Southern California. Supposedly, it's another "La Nina" year, so we are anticipating a lot of rain. Well, at least there were showers for the past two days.

2012 also has brought me a new role with the HOA... that of the Treasurer. Our past one just turned 90. 90! She was still making deposits of laundry money... rolls of quarters. If you don't do it once a week, that damn bag gets heavy. I have a canvas bag I sling over my shoulder for the task. Paying the bills are entirely another story. The president is a bore. Blah blah blah, no action, blah blah, rule breaker, blah blah blah. He doesn't do the walk throughs. He doesn't fix anything. The budget is screwed up because of the foreclosures. It's frustrating. I need to figure out ways to cut back because he surly isn't doing it.

More later.

My Life - Rain Delayed in Dallas

I'm supposed to have an interview today with a lady who is flying out from Dallas to especially talk to *me*. Pretty fancy, huh. She woke me up from a dead sleep at 7:45 AM to tell me she's having to delay her flight because of weather. Oh, man. I'm glad she called to let me know because I would have if it were me who was the one who was flying. Maybe it's sign #3. One being 75 miles to the job site and two being they won't supply me a laptop for the gig. Hrmmm. Hrmmm and Hrmmm.

WFAA Dallas News link about the weather 9AM CST