jobhunt 1 Comment

Future Planning

So, I’m starting to realize (with some help from my friends) that any job I take at this point is going to be entry-level. Not coffee-bitch entry-level, maybe, but college-grad entry-level. Basically, I’ll be pretending that the last five years never happened when I’m looking for potential jobs. Granted, I’ve learned a lot of valuable office and interpersonal skills since graduation six years ago, but I’ve only meagerly advanced my technical knowledge in my field.

Speaking of: what *is* my field, anyway? We had this discussion before, to a degree, where I bemoaned my lack of advanced skills in any given field. But even assuming that I’m getting a glorified intern job… I have a clean slate, assuming someplace will take me. I could go marketing, or IT, or something else.

I’m even contemplating taking evening classes, once I get myself a new steady job. Maybe get a certificate or an Associates at Owens in… IT? Marketing? Something that will get me where I want to be in my new company. It’ll depend on what kind of tuition reimbursement my new employer has, if any, and if I end up getting any on-the-job training in things I want to learn, like .NET or some other technology.

I still maintain that this is a delicate balance. I have to be receptive to whatever comes down the pike, and be prepared for just about any opportunity that presents itself. Winds of change, and all that.

It’s kind of like aikido: I could be thrown down and be totally unprepared, and get hurt. I could be thrown down and be excessively tense and resistant, and get hurt. Or I could take the energy that’s directed toward me and use it to my own advantage, being ready for what’s to come, take the fall rolling and come up on my feet.

I’m not terribly good at that physically yet; maybe the mental concept will come easier.

randomness 1 Comment

Guilty Pleasures

I don’t ever look up exactly when it will be broadcast, but sometimes I’ll flip past Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making the Team 2… and watch the whole show.

Honestly, it reminds me of drum corps in a way. It’s just that what they do is different from what we did, and even different from what the colorguard in the corps did. But it’s rhythmically-based physical routines in unison, and something about that really catches my attention, no matter what genre it is. Maybe because I know what kind of concentration and memorization and muscle memory that takes, on top of the sheer physical nature of what you’re doing. At least I didn’t have to worry about my figure in order to make it into drum corps.

I think the show is also helping me to break through my jealous stereotypes of skinny chicks: the successful cheerleaders have to not only have flawless bodies and pretty faces, but they are actually judged on intelligence, not to mention their ability to dance and to learn choreography quickly and accurately. The dense and ditzy ones don’t stand a chance.

I remain fixed in my assertion that many skinny hos are dumb blonde fluff chicks. Still, watching these ladies learn choreography and be both athletic and artistic makes me realize that I can’t jump to conclusions.

Plus… even though I’m a girl, I still can appreciate the eye candy. And, really, what girl wouldn’t like to fantasize about herself looking like a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader?

Don’t lie.

the ongoing saga of my job

D-Day for Loan Corrections

The day is here. September 21st. People are having their exit interviews with HR. Our three temps were done yesterday, and one stopped in this morning to collect her things. One team member has already packed up and shipped out for her Florida vacation. The department is thinning.

Yesterday afternoon, we all got “yearbook” pages featuring messages that people in our department wrote to each of us, accompanied with a CD slideshow of photos and music. I haven’t watched the slideshow yet, but I’ve been told that it features the Green Day song “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life).” Now I’ve had that song stuck in my head all morning.

It’s a unique atmosphere here today. Somber, certainly. We’ve been working together for years now, and now we’re all parting ways. Granted, a few of us still have another week or two, but that’s going to be more like hanging around a deserted school during summer vacation, doing what still needs to be done.

There’s also a feeling of discontent. Some people aren’t entirely clear on the amounts of their severance and retention, and when that will be paid out, and about their eligibility for unemployment. There’s a slight feeling of bitterness and flippancy — we’re still doing our jobs for one final day, but we’ve long since lost any feeling of company loyalty. We still have enough pride for our jobs and respect for our coworkers not to slack too much, but there’s definitely more people away from their desks and more chatter than usual. It seems to come in waves — silence, then everyone talking at once, then silence again. Team members are also amazed and frustrated at how many people are still requesting loan changes after our widely-publicized Wednesday cutoff.

One ray of light is Stacy, our boss’s boss’s boss. She came through the department earlier and spoke to each of us individually, thanking us for our hard work. Stacy is one of the few management types who really seems sincere to me. I can talk openly and freely to her, and even though I feel like I’ve got diarrhea of the mouth sometimes, she still listens and seems to honestly care. I think Stacy’s visit softened some of us a little.

This is a strange and unique experience. Each of us is simultaneously closing a chapter in our lives, and emotions can run high. As for me, I’m not emotional, per se, but I’m definitely feeling… detached? Surreal? I’m noting the poignancy of the moment without being overly sentimental about it. Sure, I spent more time with these people than with my own husband for the past few years, and I’ll miss some of them, but it’s not like they’re dying. Thanks to e-mail, we can all be in touch quickly and easily at any time, should we want to be — even Scott, who’s moving to Utah.

But I’ll see him next week. Scott, Heather, and our supervisor Ruth Ann will be around for two more weeks. I’ll be around for one.

It’s something unpredictable / But in the end it’s right

Still, work is *not* the time of my life. 🙂

jobhunt

Geek Chic

I decided to take a different tack on the job hunt this evening, and look one-by-one at each business that’s located in the business development where I currently work. I’m a big fan of the location, being that a.) it’s a fifteen-minute drive from home, and b.) there’s a fantastic wooded walking path through the middle of the area. So, I sat down with a list of (most of) the businesses in the park, and went to all of their websites, and determined whether their industry is something I’d be interested in pursuing, and looked for job postings.

I found a few that sounded vaguely interesting, and a few that I’d already known about — but I found one business that finally sparked my interest enough to get the job-hunt juices flowing again. It’s a national firm, an IT services and solutions provider, and I’m only vaguely familiar with most of their offerings. All of it made the geek girl in me drool, though.

Only a computer nerd would look through a list of technology solutions and think, “Ooh, HP Storage Area Network. I’ve never heard of that! Sounds cool!” Lots of the names like Altiris and Veritas and Citrix, and lots of the buzzwords like Web Content Filtering and Business Continuity Planning, all sounded familiar to me, but not enough so that I’d even be able to talk for two minutes straight about a given one.

The only section of their services where I know I can shine is Web Development, including website design and development and website management services. That I can do. The other stuff… it harks back to a day when I went around with Kirkum and installed new network cards in pizza-box Macs. Or imaged computers in the labs. Or installed a right-angle adapter in my own legacy Mac so I could install an ethernet card.

At any rate, I got fired up enough (and undepressed enough) that I worked on my Personal Marketing Plan like the nice outsourcing lady told me to. I have a list of about a dozen companies that may or may not be hiring, but that it would be pretty cool to work for. You can all expect that, once I have my Marketing Plan done and ready for prime time, I’ll be sharing it with you and asking you, “Do you know anyone who works for…?”

weight loss 4 Comments

Diet Do-Over

I was listening to the Reasonable Diet’s Six Minutes of Sanity podcast recently, when Sandra Ahten talked about her I-Week diet. The idea is to eat for one week in a way that reduces cravings. I listened to her talk about the brown rice and lean protein and fruits and veggies that are allowed on this one-week retraining of sorts, and the sugar and flour and processed foods that aren’t, and I thought, “I can do that!” After all, it’s not *that* much different from how I eat anyway, and I really don’t have that many cravings. Right?

Wrong.

The I-Week diet is turning into the “I weak” diet for me so far. Monday’s diet log was marred only by imitation crab, a processed food that really should not have been my midnight snack. Tuesday saw some sugar-free preserves, another processed food, but the major departure came when I started craving sweets after dinner. I tried Sandra’s Sweet Spiced Rice recipe, which wasn’t bad… but what was really calling my name was the Rocky Road light ice cream bars in the freezer. Yes, I caved. And then I ate more imitation crab before bed.

Today was on its way to being my comeback, until a surprise pizza party was announced — and who can resist a pizza party? Not me, not anymore. Three or four years ago, in the throes of Atkins, when I thought that any inflated amount of carbs would take me back to 250 lbs (do not pass Go, do not collect $200), I would have eaten what I brought for lunch and the pizza would not have even been a temptation. Now that my attitude has changed, though — one day of being bad won’t kill me — I find it harder and harder to resist yummy evilness. So, I pitched in my two bucks and am eagerly awaiting some BBQ chicken pizza.

Tomorrow is a building-wide informal banquet, and I’m not sure what the Fun Team™ is planning for that. I’m guessing that whole wheat products and lean protein are not on the menu, though. But I’m still going to partake. Friday evening, I’ll be heading down to BG to meet some friends from work. Friday is most people’s last day, plus there are several birthdays being celebrated, so I’ve been planning to join the normal weekly celebration for once.

So, basically, this week is practice. I’m following the Scott Smith rule of “be more gooder than you are badder,” and that’s keeping me from feeling like a total flop.

(Incidentally? I unsubscribed from the Motivation to Move podcast when I started feeling like there were more commercials for the Premium Membership than there was real content. Even the listener e-mails were thinly-veiled commercials for the other products he offers. Once I stopped being motivated and started being annoyed, I unsubscribed. I’m sure he’s doing well enough that one less subscriber to his free feed certainly won’t be noticed.)

While I am proud of myself for maintaining my weight for some time now (within five pounds of 200 for about the past year, after re-losing ten pounds that crept up on me), I’m ready to get down below being on the verge of obesity.

Or am I? Apparently, I’m not ready enough.