(no subject)
J's been gone for almost a week now. I'm getting by okay. I'm kind've pretending like she's away on one of her business trips. I imagine that next week will be the bad spell, because that's when it becomes clear that she's not coming back after all. Of course at that point she'll be heading back my way for the weekend so it won't be as bad as it could be.
We've been doing very good about talking to each other every day, often times more than once. It's as close as we can get to our normal daily interaction, but a pale imitation. I have to say though that talking to her makes me increasingly wary about moving to Boston. It just doesn't sound promising. I talk to her most often when she's either en route somewhere or when she's finally in her room getting ready for bed, and she's always cold. Teeth-chattering, lip-numbingly cold. I'm sitting in 60 degree weather and she's talking about snow and icy rain and there's this wind that I can hear over the phone. Sounds absolutely awful. It also sounds like she spends 90% of the time that she's not working, traveling. She's always on the T or on her way to the T to do anything; visit a friend, go to dinner, get groceries...it sounds miserable. She sounds cold and constantly on the go.
The worst part though is how she sounds about her job. When we initially talked about moving from Atlanta, I agreed that I would move if she found a job that she was excited and passionate about, and that I didn't want to move for "just another job" that wasn't doing what she wanted to do and didn't offer the advancement and experience that she was always claiming she lacked. I thought this job was that for her, but talking to her it too sounds miserable. She went from an office (albeit one that she shared from time to time with an intern) to a cubicle. It has a window at least but that window also lets in a wicked draft and she says she's freezing and might need to get a space heater to stay warm. She reported today that they don't really support remote work, so there's no Citrix access like she had, and although there is some VPN implementation, you have to ask for that access and apparently folks look askance at you when you do because they don't so much do the working remotely thing. She reports also that so far a lot of her job appears to be contract management. I don't know a whole lot about what that means, but it sounds like a lot of financial data handling and paperwork, and that is most definitely not what she wants to be involved in. I'm not sure what she wants to be involved in, and I've said before that I'm not sure that she's sure either because she wants to be part of the programmatic side of Public Health but it isn't immediately clear to me what that is if it isn't paperwork-heavy. I'l have to ask her again.
In general she just sounds...unenthused, you know? Like, I kind've think that when you start a new job, if it's one you wanted, there'd be a lot of excitement about the newness of it and the learning the new environment and everything, and she just sounds sort've overwhelmed and disenchanted. I'm hoping for her sake and mine that it's just too overwhelming to be excited about yet, that she's busy working on getting the hang of everything (it sounds like they're ready to throw a million things at her at once) and just feeling a little bogged down by it. She says that she likes the people so far at least, so that's promising. Liking ones coworkers can go a long way towards making or breaking a job. I'm hoping that next week the reports will be more promising as she acclimates and gets into a groove.
We've been doing very good about talking to each other every day, often times more than once. It's as close as we can get to our normal daily interaction, but a pale imitation. I have to say though that talking to her makes me increasingly wary about moving to Boston. It just doesn't sound promising. I talk to her most often when she's either en route somewhere or when she's finally in her room getting ready for bed, and she's always cold. Teeth-chattering, lip-numbingly cold. I'm sitting in 60 degree weather and she's talking about snow and icy rain and there's this wind that I can hear over the phone. Sounds absolutely awful. It also sounds like she spends 90% of the time that she's not working, traveling. She's always on the T or on her way to the T to do anything; visit a friend, go to dinner, get groceries...it sounds miserable. She sounds cold and constantly on the go.
The worst part though is how she sounds about her job. When we initially talked about moving from Atlanta, I agreed that I would move if she found a job that she was excited and passionate about, and that I didn't want to move for "just another job" that wasn't doing what she wanted to do and didn't offer the advancement and experience that she was always claiming she lacked. I thought this job was that for her, but talking to her it too sounds miserable. She went from an office (albeit one that she shared from time to time with an intern) to a cubicle. It has a window at least but that window also lets in a wicked draft and she says she's freezing and might need to get a space heater to stay warm. She reported today that they don't really support remote work, so there's no Citrix access like she had, and although there is some VPN implementation, you have to ask for that access and apparently folks look askance at you when you do because they don't so much do the working remotely thing. She reports also that so far a lot of her job appears to be contract management. I don't know a whole lot about what that means, but it sounds like a lot of financial data handling and paperwork, and that is most definitely not what she wants to be involved in. I'm not sure what she wants to be involved in, and I've said before that I'm not sure that she's sure either because she wants to be part of the programmatic side of Public Health but it isn't immediately clear to me what that is if it isn't paperwork-heavy. I'l have to ask her again.
In general she just sounds...unenthused, you know? Like, I kind've think that when you start a new job, if it's one you wanted, there'd be a lot of excitement about the newness of it and the learning the new environment and everything, and she just sounds sort've overwhelmed and disenchanted. I'm hoping for her sake and mine that it's just too overwhelming to be excited about yet, that she's busy working on getting the hang of everything (it sounds like they're ready to throw a million things at her at once) and just feeling a little bogged down by it. She says that she likes the people so far at least, so that's promising. Liking ones coworkers can go a long way towards making or breaking a job. I'm hoping that next week the reports will be more promising as she acclimates and gets into a groove.