self analysises
i really like my new black, plastic Calvin Klein glasses that i picked up this past Friday. whenever i next have the wherewithal to put on make-up, i will have to remember to snap a picture.
my schedule has been turned upside-down this week! what happened was, i had a bit of a freak out the previous week, realizing i really wanted my own place for myself and Whiskey. and then i flipped again because i thought, "WELL... fuck. To get my own place I need $$$$$$. And this NY unemployment BS ain't doing the trick." Which took my train of thought immediately to, "GODDAMNIT, I need a job."
long story short, i posted my resume on several job/career search sites, and my phone has been ringing off the hook with recruiters contacting me with various relevant positions. even though i am not looking in the NYC market, i want to at the very least maintain my previous salary and i would prefer if it went up $5,000 actually. what i'm not going to get down here in North Carolina, or anywhere for that matter, is anything close to type of bonuses i was receiving as additional income, which is exactly why i have no intention of lowering my salary expectation despite a different standard of living. and you know, i've had a heck of a lot of interest; already had several phone interviews, and i'm sure i've locked down at least one face-to-face interview off those.
most employers do the phone-interview-first now to weed out the riffraff ever since the economy tanked at the end of '08 with Lehman Brothers and just kept spiraling out of control... i remember walking by Bear Stearns every day to get to work at my hedge fund, and once the buyout took place, it didn't take the powers that be long to switch out the "Bear Stearns" letters around the building for "J.P. Morgan". i mean, i literally saw them taking the letters off and putting the new logo on. jesus christ was that a symbolic moment for me on that morning commute: i was already scared what was going to happen just with the economy in general, let alone my income and ultimately my career. all my company layoffs started around then and i was not only fearing for my personal employment, but having to disable the accounts of all my colleagues getting laid off, a good chunk of them my friends, and not being able to give them a heads-up about it. talk about a mental and emotional mind fuck. living in fear and with knowledge like that is so extremely debilitating.
if you haven't seen Too Big to Fail, you should. i couldn't believe how accurately the movie betrayed how everyone was thinking and feeling at the time who were involved somehow in the Finance industry. i literally would walk into our shared IT office and say, "well, how many points to do you think the stock market will fall today?" and over and over that answer was 200, 500, 800, 400 again and again. it just became unreal. it was nuts. and seeing the traders' faces and my friends in the hedged equities finance/accounting group whisper to me "we lost $80,000 in ONE DAY." going from what you thought was a fantastic, stable job to have it crumbling under you was, gosh, a hard one to swallow and really just terrifying.
ultimately i was kept on under contract to basically dismantle the data center and shut off the lights at Satellite Asset Management, and while that bought me a good two and a half years of income, it was not a role in which i could feel nurtured and grow to bigger and better things. we had no money to spend anymore... and without that, you simply cannot progress in the field of IT. everything is constantly changing and without the cash to upgrade or implement new things, all you have left to focus on is ending contracts prematurely, redoing the inventory lists as we tried to sell all the unused equipment, and continuing to support old platforms, keeping my IT experience stuck in the past. when it all finally ended, i was so incredibly RELIEVED, and i should have been, as therapists told me at rehab "you've been tied to a dying donkey for years." that'd make anyone depressed, and anxious too, especially if you have already been diagnosed by several professionals as having Generalized Anxiety Disorder. basically i couldn't handle what was happening the last two years of my life in NYC and while i tried to mask it with pills, specifically xanax, the drugs stopped working and the universe finally knocked me on my ass at the end. literally. it sucks it got to that point, having grand mal seizures in Greece whilst walking down the sidewalk, but i needed something bad to happen to me... i had to hit some sort of bottom or i would've never taken my addiction seriously.
now, i'm grateful things went down as they did, because it provided me the opportunity to start over, in a way. and i think i'm finally confident enough in my abilities to learn again and acquire another job in the same field, preferably IT for the investment industry, seeing as their the ones who do the nice bonuses. to reboot my life, as it were. :) that's my motto.
in other news, i was hooked up with a long-sober dude through our psychotherapist, and i'm supposed to meet him tomorrow at an AA meeting at 1pm. this will be my first in NC. and i am a little unsure about it. i know everyone will be super nice and want to know what i'm about, but the thing i'm focused on having to deal with is GOD. AA has to do with a higher power, and while it can be anything you imagine, for a lot of people in the south, it's definitely GOD as in the Christian God. Jesus Christ. that i do not need, my friends. but i'm just going to suck it up and go, so i can say i at least gave it a shot in North Carolina. you never know! i've been to a meeting in NYC but they are of course very progressive there so it wasn't an issue.
hope you all are feeling well! xo.
my schedule has been turned upside-down this week! what happened was, i had a bit of a freak out the previous week, realizing i really wanted my own place for myself and Whiskey. and then i flipped again because i thought, "WELL... fuck. To get my own place I need $$$$$$. And this NY unemployment BS ain't doing the trick." Which took my train of thought immediately to, "GODDAMNIT, I need a job."
long story short, i posted my resume on several job/career search sites, and my phone has been ringing off the hook with recruiters contacting me with various relevant positions. even though i am not looking in the NYC market, i want to at the very least maintain my previous salary and i would prefer if it went up $5,000 actually. what i'm not going to get down here in North Carolina, or anywhere for that matter, is anything close to type of bonuses i was receiving as additional income, which is exactly why i have no intention of lowering my salary expectation despite a different standard of living. and you know, i've had a heck of a lot of interest; already had several phone interviews, and i'm sure i've locked down at least one face-to-face interview off those.
most employers do the phone-interview-first now to weed out the riffraff ever since the economy tanked at the end of '08 with Lehman Brothers and just kept spiraling out of control... i remember walking by Bear Stearns every day to get to work at my hedge fund, and once the buyout took place, it didn't take the powers that be long to switch out the "Bear Stearns" letters around the building for "J.P. Morgan". i mean, i literally saw them taking the letters off and putting the new logo on. jesus christ was that a symbolic moment for me on that morning commute: i was already scared what was going to happen just with the economy in general, let alone my income and ultimately my career. all my company layoffs started around then and i was not only fearing for my personal employment, but having to disable the accounts of all my colleagues getting laid off, a good chunk of them my friends, and not being able to give them a heads-up about it. talk about a mental and emotional mind fuck. living in fear and with knowledge like that is so extremely debilitating.
if you haven't seen Too Big to Fail, you should. i couldn't believe how accurately the movie betrayed how everyone was thinking and feeling at the time who were involved somehow in the Finance industry. i literally would walk into our shared IT office and say, "well, how many points to do you think the stock market will fall today?" and over and over that answer was 200, 500, 800, 400 again and again. it just became unreal. it was nuts. and seeing the traders' faces and my friends in the hedged equities finance/accounting group whisper to me "we lost $80,000 in ONE DAY." going from what you thought was a fantastic, stable job to have it crumbling under you was, gosh, a hard one to swallow and really just terrifying.
ultimately i was kept on under contract to basically dismantle the data center and shut off the lights at Satellite Asset Management, and while that bought me a good two and a half years of income, it was not a role in which i could feel nurtured and grow to bigger and better things. we had no money to spend anymore... and without that, you simply cannot progress in the field of IT. everything is constantly changing and without the cash to upgrade or implement new things, all you have left to focus on is ending contracts prematurely, redoing the inventory lists as we tried to sell all the unused equipment, and continuing to support old platforms, keeping my IT experience stuck in the past. when it all finally ended, i was so incredibly RELIEVED, and i should have been, as therapists told me at rehab "you've been tied to a dying donkey for years." that'd make anyone depressed, and anxious too, especially if you have already been diagnosed by several professionals as having Generalized Anxiety Disorder. basically i couldn't handle what was happening the last two years of my life in NYC and while i tried to mask it with pills, specifically xanax, the drugs stopped working and the universe finally knocked me on my ass at the end. literally. it sucks it got to that point, having grand mal seizures in Greece whilst walking down the sidewalk, but i needed something bad to happen to me... i had to hit some sort of bottom or i would've never taken my addiction seriously.
now, i'm grateful things went down as they did, because it provided me the opportunity to start over, in a way. and i think i'm finally confident enough in my abilities to learn again and acquire another job in the same field, preferably IT for the investment industry, seeing as their the ones who do the nice bonuses. to reboot my life, as it were. :) that's my motto.
in other news, i was hooked up with a long-sober dude through our psychotherapist, and i'm supposed to meet him tomorrow at an AA meeting at 1pm. this will be my first in NC. and i am a little unsure about it. i know everyone will be super nice and want to know what i'm about, but the thing i'm focused on having to deal with is GOD. AA has to do with a higher power, and while it can be anything you imagine, for a lot of people in the south, it's definitely GOD as in the Christian God. Jesus Christ. that i do not need, my friends. but i'm just going to suck it up and go, so i can say i at least gave it a shot in North Carolina. you never know! i've been to a meeting in NYC but they are of course very progressive there so it wasn't an issue.
hope you all are feeling well! xo.