Thursday, January 20, 2011

The Light

As I mentioned yesterday, my husband graduated college after many, many, many years and sidetracks, and giving ups, and life getting in the way of life. Also for those many, many, many years, he has held the same job as a manager of a national chain grocery store. This has offered a decent salary and pretty great benefits...but it's also offered the crappiest schedule ever for a family who actually wants to hang out with each other. He has two days off during the week. On the bright side, has allowed him to watch the kids and become a pretty fantastic and confident dad. On the other hand, this means that we almost never get to have an entire day off together. He also often works shifts in the evening. This means a lot of solo days/nights of solo parenting for me. And not too much couple togetherness for us.

So now that he's a fancy new grad, he has started the official job hunt. Last week, he was brought in to take an exam for a company to see if they'd even let him interview. He passed, and had his first interview today. It went great. This is more and more seeming like one of those dreamy dream jobs that comes along once in a lifetime where they pay good, amazing benefits, a bajillion days off a year, and they will meticulously train him in his exact chosen field for a frakkin year before they expect him to be able to do things by himself. For a 30-something dude who is starting out fresh after working 20 years in customer service, this is pretty amazing stuff. He wants this job so so so so so so bad and holy god, if he doesn't get it, it's gonna get all kinds of ugly up in our house. I have that motherly holding my breath *omg i want this to work out SO bad* thing going on....and not just for the changes it will bring to my life, but for all the things it will do to/for him....his self-esteem, getting to experience a REAL job, working with NORMAL non-16 year old people. Have you ever really looked at the people working in grocery stores? Around 94% of them are...off.

I've been putting out some serious vibes to the universe, begging and pleading to the powers that be. C'mon, universe. We need this one.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Recap

So, it's January now. Okay, then.

How did NaNoWriMo go, you wonder? I got about 463 words in before I realized I was most definitely not having fun. I wasn't enjoying any part of the process, and checking the word count after each sentence, as if it was going to be 50,000 words after a couple of days. It reminded me of writing papers in college and the entire time, the voice inside my head is grumbling about all the other things I'd rather be doing, including cleaning the kitchen. I think when I'd rather be scrubbing the grout in my floor tile, that I should reevaluate the project that I'm doing for fun. Plus, I read this article that said even though some things may seem obvious (i like to write, i write for my job, i'm okay at it, so I should write a book...) sometimes it just takes you down a path (...but what i really like is telling a story, but not through the written word) and you realize that a series of events in leading you down a different path to what you really love. So, I'm working on flushing that out.

Also in November, my baby turned one. And my husband graduated college after taking classes for 20 (twenty) (yes, i know) years.

And then this funny thing happened. I realized I LOVE my job. Prior to this, when a friend would ask how I'm liking it, I would say "It's good. A solid job. Cool people" and that was about it. "Sooo, you don't like it?" they would ask. "No, no! It's good." Then, they would do that "MMMkay" thing with their eyebrows and we'd move on to the next subject. But all of a sudden, I think all that residual anger over being laid off from my last job finally went away and I realized "Oh, holy shit! This job is freaking awesome." Seriously - a great salary, a flexible schedule, an interesting work load, an amazing smart boss who wants me to move up and make more money and always has my back, cool coworkers who I get along with wonderfully, and (recent development) my own office.

It's becoming more and more obvious how ridiculously lucky that I am.