Back in the saddle again
Ever since JC Superstar wrapped (yours truly playing the savior of mankind btw) at the end of July I've felt out of sorts. Kimberly feels it too and it's eating us up. She's completely uninspired with her work and dreads going each day. Me, my work is somewhat more inspiring but the daily repetition has become mind numbing. Add to that the caustic atmosphere at the office and it makes for an unhappy day. My boss left at the end of August to take another position down South. Since his departure things have been better and more congenial among the staff but still not what I would call friendly.
Sometimes I think it's my fault for not playing the office politics game well enough or for not wanting to share details about my personal life with people that I find contemptuous. Hell, even if I didn't find them contemptuous I still wouldn't share anything about my personal life. I guess I'm just not willing to trust work colleagues as friends.
At any rate, I've once again begun sending out resumes. I know some people who never stop but I think it's a good idea to give a new job a while without really looking for anything else. It seems like, whenever I start looking, inevitable comparisons start to be made about the importance of one position or another or about my personal self-worth in terms of salary. That stuff generally depresses me and doesn't motivate me to give my current work my full attention-so I've consciously not been looking at anything really for the last year and a half. That changed at the end of July with a rather unpleasant altercation between me and my (former) boss. The short story is that he was convinced that I was badmouthing him all around town and he chose to retaliate by writing me up on a list of imagined infractions.
Now, as much as I would have liked to spread the word of his silliness all over the town I did not and, as a matter of principle, I never do that kind of stuff. All it would do is make me look like an idiot for saying it. So anyway, that conversation with the boss didn't go so well. Silly me, i attempted to discuss it with HR. Boy was that a mistake. For future reference, HR is squarely in the pocket of management. Any pretense made of "confidentiality" or "impartiality" is just that a pretense.
So resumes have been going out and I even have had and have a few interviews. Next week I have phone interviews for jobs in extreme Northern California and (perhaps) Upstate New York near Niagara Falls. I've been madly preparing for them. Going over my books of potential interview questions and preparing amusing and insightful anecdotes.
It's all very exciting to think that a potential change of job and locale may fix what ails Kimberly and me. But will it? It's an enormous and uncertain undertaking to pack up and move all your stuff and move, yet again, to the other end of the country. Especially without knowing if, by doing so, you are actually changing anything that matters.
Kimberly and I have talked a lot about what our goals are. They all seem to revolve around these two points- paying off our student loan and credit debt & finding professional satisfaction at our jobs. Some days one seems more important than the other but then they flip flop. Are these two goals mutually exclusive? I surely hope not.
Sometimes I think it's my fault for not playing the office politics game well enough or for not wanting to share details about my personal life with people that I find contemptuous. Hell, even if I didn't find them contemptuous I still wouldn't share anything about my personal life. I guess I'm just not willing to trust work colleagues as friends.
At any rate, I've once again begun sending out resumes. I know some people who never stop but I think it's a good idea to give a new job a while without really looking for anything else. It seems like, whenever I start looking, inevitable comparisons start to be made about the importance of one position or another or about my personal self-worth in terms of salary. That stuff generally depresses me and doesn't motivate me to give my current work my full attention-so I've consciously not been looking at anything really for the last year and a half. That changed at the end of July with a rather unpleasant altercation between me and my (former) boss. The short story is that he was convinced that I was badmouthing him all around town and he chose to retaliate by writing me up on a list of imagined infractions.
Now, as much as I would have liked to spread the word of his silliness all over the town I did not and, as a matter of principle, I never do that kind of stuff. All it would do is make me look like an idiot for saying it. So anyway, that conversation with the boss didn't go so well. Silly me, i attempted to discuss it with HR. Boy was that a mistake. For future reference, HR is squarely in the pocket of management. Any pretense made of "confidentiality" or "impartiality" is just that a pretense.
So resumes have been going out and I even have had and have a few interviews. Next week I have phone interviews for jobs in extreme Northern California and (perhaps) Upstate New York near Niagara Falls. I've been madly preparing for them. Going over my books of potential interview questions and preparing amusing and insightful anecdotes.
It's all very exciting to think that a potential change of job and locale may fix what ails Kimberly and me. But will it? It's an enormous and uncertain undertaking to pack up and move all your stuff and move, yet again, to the other end of the country. Especially without knowing if, by doing so, you are actually changing anything that matters.
Kimberly and I have talked a lot about what our goals are. They all seem to revolve around these two points- paying off our student loan and credit debt & finding professional satisfaction at our jobs. Some days one seems more important than the other but then they flip flop. Are these two goals mutually exclusive? I surely hope not.