I Live Under a Rock

Edging towards a precipice

2010-01-06T18:33:00Z

Ever since deciding that staying at my current job would not be good for me, I’ve been searching for something else. Not a whole lot out there. However I got a couple of nibbles quite recently! One said they would schedule me for a second interview when time permitted. That was two weeks ago, so I guess time hasn’t permitted. I’ve sent cheerful followup emails so I know they didn’t forget me.

The second prospect is even more promising! The pay is much better, BUT they want me to start part-time, sort of a trial period. If they like me they may hire me full time, with a significant increase in pay. Having a mortgage to worry about, I of course can’t just subsist on a part-time paycheck. So rather than jump out of this job and into part-time, or worse, decline the opportunity altogether, I’ve decided to negotiate with my current employer and see if they’ll switch me to part time.

It feels like rather than jumping off the cliff I’m edging towards it and peeking over, hoping to engineer a rope to ease myself down instead of freefalling. If my current employer agrees to switching me to part time, then I’m all set! If for some reason the opportunity doesn’t turn into a full-time position, then I can ease back into full-time at the old job. However the workload at the old job requires a full-time person, so I’m not sure my plan will work. My supervisor has told me that he’s going to try lobbying that for me.

If it doesn’t work out though… well, I’m going to have to take a flying leap of faith that this opportunity will expand into a full-time position for me. Either my parachute will open I will splatter at the bottom. This current job is dragging me down with all the crap that goes on here. The CEO is crazy and unethical, and I don’t want to be a part of helping such a person succeed. We’ll see what happens…

Networking when you're an introvert who hates networking

2009-12-08T15:25:26Z

So I did a bit of research yesterday about strategies to network when you hate talking to people. Like Robert said in the comments of the previous post, you pretty much do have to force yourself to do it. However it doesn’t have to involve walking up to a stranger and attempting to strike up inane conversation. I read about a couple of strategies that can help people like me.

1. Arrive at the event early. It’s much easier to become get involved with a smattering of individuals than to get there and find a lot of people already grouped in conversations.

2. Sit in the first two rows. Although it goes against everything my personality prefers, the fact is a lot of important people tend to sit in the front. If you arrive early and get your butt into one of those important seats, no one is going to ask you to move. Chances are higher that you might sit next to someone that could be helpful in your career, and the fact that you’re there before the event is starting gives you time to strike up a conversation.

3. Focus on how you can help the other person. Introverts like myself are usually not keen on talking about ourselves. We are excellent listeners. Extroverts love this. Finally, something that works to our advantage. As a networking novice, I always thought the whole point of networking was to find people who can help you. This is too “me-centric” to be successful. The point of networking is to find people who can help you later. People rarely happen to have a job in their back pocket waiting for you. More importantly, it’s not just those who can help you later, but those will want to help you later. And the best way to get them to keep you in mind is by helping them first. Help them how? Maybe they’re looking for a particular type of contact. Maybe you can put them in touch with someone. Something like that. I am personally going to find it this part hard because, well, I don’t really know anyone useful.

The thing about networking, I discovered, is that you need to cultivate and maintain your contacts so they’re there when you need them. It’s not like groceries that you get when you need eggs or carrots. I can’t just go to some event and find people with jobs waiting for me. I have to think of it like an herb garden. If I don’t maintain it, there won’t be any herbs for me to use when it’s time to cook. That’s another difficult thing for me. I am terrible at maintaining relationships outside of the one i have with my honey. I’m like one of those one-person dogs who could care less about other people. This is fine for dogs, but bad for one’s career. I don’t even keep in touch with my own family and friends that much… how am I going to maintain some kind of relationship with a bunch of strangers? I guess that’ll be another day of research for me.

Breaking out

2009-11-30T22:19:00Z

I read a quote somewhere once, “If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve already got.” That’s what keeps happening in my life, job-wise. I feel like I’m moving sideways from job to job, but rarely up. The duties are pretty much the same, and the only things that change are the scenery and the pay. Am I destined to be a grunt forever?

I look at those around me… the managers are now younger than me, and the coworkers at my level are like 10 years younger. All my attempts to bridge the gap between grunt and decision-maker and cross over into a role with more responsibility have never panned out. I used to believe that you make your own luck, but in all reality, there is a great deal of random dumb luck involved as well. You have to be in the right place at the right time. Or in the case of my current workplace, the right gender. I figured it was just a matter of time before I become dissatisfied with this job. The big boss is a hypocritical control freak and a closet sexist. I need to get out, but the jobs that I really want I don’t seem to be qualified enough for. So I may end up moving sideways again.

Is this what a midlife crisis is like? Isn’t it a little early? I’m not even 40 yet!

Instead of being a whiny whiner, I want to do something about it. Maybe get some kind of certification or degree or whatever bullshit these employers want. But they’re expensive! I don’t want to spend thousands of dollars only to find out that it does nothing for my career. Employers want experience. So how do I GET that experience? Dumb fucking luck. Or working for free. I don’t know. I’ve been pondering it for a year and I still have no answers.

Fabulous coming soon

2009-11-03T15:39:07Z

Finally! At long last! The condo is officially ours and we are moving in!!! Over the past week or two (when was that last post?) we…

Signed all the loan and title docs
Got the keys to the condo
Dropped a few things off at the new place
Had an awkward conversation with the seller, who was there unexpectedly to collect a few things
Rented a huge 24’ moving truck in LA
Emptied our storage unit just before it was time to pay for the next month
Drove down to San Diego in this massive thing, which instilled a newfound respect for truck drivers
Emptied the moving truck into the garage while the house was being painted and re-floored

And that’s pretty much where we are now, living out of boxes while the painting is finished up. It’s soooo nice to not be sleeping on that foam mattress guest bed anymore. The place is going to look fabulous when it’s finished! I don’t use that word often, but I think it will apply. Who needs a gay man when my honey has the soul of an interior decorator?

Things in storage that I really miss

2009-10-22T14:36:00Z

It’s been about 6 months of waiting for this condo deal to go through. Short sales. Are. Ridiculous. But we’re nearly at the end! Just waiting for the loan underwriters to finish their hairbrained nitpicking and fund the damn loan. Then we can close escrow! I soooo look forward to getting our stuff back out of storage. What I miss the most:

Tivo
58” HD Plasma TV
King bed
Gas stove (electric stoves are horrible!)
My box of work things from my last job
The rest of my clothes
Closet space

It’ll be so nice to get back into a place of our own!

Procrastination

2009-10-20T20:59:00Z

Procrastination usually puts off a distasteful task for a little while, and rarely pays off because that task is still there when you’re done reorganizing your desk. It’s generally best to just power through it and get it over with. However at this place I work at now, procrastination sometimes does pay off.

Priorities change on a daily (and occasionally hourly) basis here. If I’m given an assignment I’m not keen on doing, sometimes all I need to do is work on something else, bide my time a bit, and that unwanted task will get deprioritized. If I’m lucky, it may even go away altogether! It’s one of the incredibly few “bright sides” of working for a scatter-brained, micro-managing, self-proclaimed “visionary”.

So here I am, procrastinating, because I was told to update all the products on this website that I never even knew existed. Seriously, why do we have 12 different websites selling the same damn thing? His reasoning? “The more exposure we get, the better.” Yeah. It’s called diluting your efforts to target markets. With him it’s quantity over quality. So if he’s not going to listen, I’m certainly not going to put forth my best effort because it’s all wasted.

What the-

2009-09-28T15:02:00Z

Has it really been two full months since my last post? Wow have I been slacking! Well, not really… I’ve been working. I guess I tend to blog more when I’m dissatisfied at work… so I must be pretty happy!

It could be better, actually. The pay is more than $20,000 less than I was making at my last job. And who ever heard of a company recognizing only THREE paid holidays a year? But wait, that’s only IF those holidays fall on a weekday. Seriously. Why?

But anyway, nevermind that. What’s going on with my living situation? Since moving to San Diego, we’ve been staying with my sweetheart’s brother. We expected the stay to be about two months while we searched for a house. It’s been four, and her brother has been hinting that we are no longer welcome. He hasn’t said anything, of course, because he hates confrontation. But all the passive aggressive shit is not lost on us. Imagine him telling my sweety that she “should really pick up a little more around the house”. This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard! She keeps that damn place spotless. She’s very particular about that. So she asked him point blank, “What exactly needs ‘picking up’? What am I missing?” He couldn’t give a direct answer. “Just… pick up a little more...” What a load of baloney. Having to vacuum every single day is not reasonable. I can’t wait to get outta there.

It’s finally looking like we will be out soon. We placed an offer on a condo in MAY and haven’t had anything happen on that until now. They finally accepted the offer and gave final written approval. Six freaking months later! OMG, if you’re ever wanting to get a house within two months, do NOT go for a short sale! It will take forever. But at least things are moving again and I can’t wait to get into a place of our own.

The Choice: Work

2009-07-28T22:02:00Z

I’ve really fallen behind on my blogging, but my last post was a bit of a cliff-hanger, so here I am to provide the conclusion. It’s about 3 weeks late, but oh well, better late than never.

Two days after getting that job offer, I got another job offer. A better one that was not entry-level and was much closer to the condo we are trying to buy. (We’re still trying to go into escrow, secure the loan, and all that crap. Short sale my ass.) So far I like the job, despite the numerous drawbacks:

Why It Sucks:

NO Medical or Dental insurance
Only THREE paid holidays, and only if they fall on a weekday (WTF??)
The company owner is chaotically disorganized in his methods, and allows his lazy, unlikeable oaf of a son to stay on payroll for doing very little
The pay leaves something to be desired

Why I Stay:

The team I work with are fantastically supportive of each other, and firmly believe in every aspect of teamwork
The work is very engaging, varied and does not take long to complete
I feel like my input is valued, and that my efforts have a direct impact on the company
The work days pass by very quickly
The economy is still in the crapper and jobs are not that plentiful

I guess some things are hard to put a price on. Is being paid really well to do unsatisfying work worth it? How much is happiness worth? Despite the ridiculously huge drawbacks of this job, I’m still strangely happy there.

To work or not to work

2009-06-12T04:37:00Z

Today I received a job offer. The pay is about $17.50 an hour, much less than I’ve been making for the last 5 years. It’s a seasonal summer job helping to create travel websites, with a chance of it being permanent depending on workload, upon which they would increase the pay. They didn’t say how much of an increase, but I can’t imagine it doubling like it needs to to be even close to my previous pay level.

My dilemma is this… do I take the job knowing it’s going to be temporary, or do I decline it so that I can still collect unemployment? On the one hand I’ll be working 40 hours a week to earn $700 a week. while on the other hand I can get up to $410 a week for doing nothing at all. Should I take the job?

My responsible side tells me not to freeload off an already over-burdened state unless I have to. And I would earn more money with the job anyway. My lazy side tells me that tons of people get to be paid for doing nothing, don’t I deserve it too? Wasn’t that why I was so thrilled to get laid off?

I think I’ll decide tomorrow. I’ve got another job interview tomorrow, so after I see how that goes, I’ll decide. If my chances of getting a better paying job are immediate, then I won’t take this one. But if tomorrow’s prospect is crappy, then I think I’ll go for this job. I don’t think I can bring myself to not take a job solely because I’ll no longer be able to freeload off the state. So I guess my dilemma isn’t whether to work or not to work, it’s whether to work now or work later.

Male-directed all-girl porn is the worst

2009-06-09T05:06:00Z

So we’re living at my honey’s brother’s house for the time being. He’s out of town for a few days, so we were just hanging out at the house, watching his DirecTV. We were flipping through some channels trying to figure out which ones he does get (it’s so annoying how we have to skip past sooo many blank “Channel not purchased” channels), when we encountered a naughty channel. I forget which one it was, but the show that was being broadcast was called “Chocolate All Girl Orgy”. Being lesbians, of course we had to pause and watch the girl-on-girl action for awhile.

It was SO not directed by a woman. Everything looked exactly like how it would be performed if it were standard hetero porn. Even the clit-tonguing looked really uncomfortable with overly exaggerated tongue-wagging. There were girls with strap-ons pumping half-heartedly, which I can accept because some people like that. But the biggest, most ridiculous piece of porno fakery was when some of the girls started sucking on the strap-ons as if they were real dicks. Excuse me? Exactly who is getting what kind of pleasure out of this? The male viewers watching it I suppose. But that seriously ruined what little realism the film might have had.

I know 99% of porn is made for men, but for me this was just over the top ludicrous. I want to see stuff that is at least plausible. To me, Space Nuts was more plausible than this stuff. Male directors need to stick with boy-girl porn and leave the all-girl stuff alone.

Black thumbs

2009-06-01T16:04:21Z

I was talking to some friends and we got to talking about plants. There are numerous plants that grow easily with minimal effort on our parts. You just water them and they thrive. Some even grown in water so you never have to worry about over-watering. Yet there are some instances where even the easiest plants to grow will wilt and die under the care of certain people.

Instead of a green thumb, these people have black thumbs. I know of two people like this, and the interesting thing is, few people like them. They have very self-absorbed or self-serving personalities. It makes me wonder about the negative energy these people project, and how it affects things around them. Are plants particularly susceptible to the energy we project? These black thumbed people I know aren’t stupid or neglectful. I’ve shared a house with one of them before, and she definitely wasn’t neglectful of home details, however annoying she might have been. Yet the plants she touched would die in a matter of weeks.

It may just be a coincidence that these unlikeable people are bad with plants. But how do you kill a plant that only needs water when you are watering it regularly? Maybe I’m just being silly, but I think a person’s negative energy does affect things around them. Or instead of projecting negative energy, perhaps they suck energy from around them. Since these people are selfish by nature, it would make sense that they take energy away from others. Do I sound like a hippie now?

Exhaustion

2009-05-29T04:05:00Z

Today was the big move where most of our stuff went into storage (until we get a house). After a full week of scrambling to get everything into boxes and shifting boxes all over the place, we are tiiiiiiiiired. Conversations are a lot like this:

Her: Oww.
Me: What is it?
Her: My legs hurt.
Me: Mine too. Should we walk the dogs?
Her: ...
Me: Yeah probably not a good idea.
Her: We should fold this laundry though.
Me: Okay. Oww.
Her: Hurts?
Me: This shirt is too heavy.
Her: Oww.
Me: More pain?
Her: I can’t believe it… my toenails are hurting!

My poor sweetheart is limping when she walks now due to sore muscles, and apparently sore toenails. This ordeal is almost over though, so we’ll soon have time to rest. We need massages.

How did I acquire so much stuff?

2009-05-27T22:57:00Z

This week has been a furious flurry of packing activity. Even after throwing or giving away half a ton stuff, we still have 12 tons to move. It’s amazing. My online activities have been very limited despite my being out of the job. Maybe after the move I’ll finally be able to have some days of restful loafing. Probably the most satisfying part of my packing is tearing pages out of my old employee handbook and crumpling them to protect some dishes. Dress code huh? Rrriiiiiip! Code of conduct? Rrrrriiiiiip! That thing is finally useful for something other than taking up space in my desk. *gleeful cackling*

Free at last

2009-05-21T01:05:00Z

Yesterday I came home from work and had the following exchange:

Me: Hey I have good news!
Sweety: Really? Good!
Me: I got laid off!
Sweety: ... wait… WHAT??

I guess it wasn’t the best way to break the news, but to me it really was good news. I was really starting to HATE my job. The company was run by incompetents, and my actual work was becoming more and more tedious and mind-numbing. I was wanting to leave anyway, and now I can collect unemployment while I continue my job search in San Diego. The job hunt should go better now that I’m free to say that I already live in San Diego. We’ll be moving by the end of the month.

Free at last!

Rocking and Rumbling in LA

2009-05-19T23:15:00Z

Yesterday I was watching a movie when the house started shaking, and kept on shaking… and shook some more. Not terribly hard, but it went on for a good 20 seconds - an interminable amount of time when your heart is racing and adrenaline is pumping. I actually got off the couch and started heading for a doorway. Today I was at the office when another one hit, this time feeling like a jolt in the ground.

It’s really unusual for earthquakes to be hitting Los Angeles directly. It’s usually along the larger fault lines about an hour east of here. The distance makes a huge difference. Last night’s earthquake was a 4.7 about five miles from my house. The rumbling was a little prolonged and felt like the ground was rocking. Today’s earthquake was a 4.1 about 3 miles from where I was working. It was very short, but sharper, like a jolt.

Imagine a pond when you throw a rock in it. The epicenter jolts the hardest but the briefest, while the surrounding areas are bombarded with ripples. This is the first time I’ve actually felt the difference. All the past earthquakes I’ve felt I’ve actually been at least 50 or more miles away. I’m glad it was fairly small. No damage.

The interesting thing is my reaction. We’re always told to duck and cover when an earthquake strikes, and I know this perfectly well. But when that fight or flight reflex kicks in, for some reason I always want to head for a doorway, which isn’t always the best place to be. Both times this happened, and afterwards I sit my butt back down and wonder why I did that. When you react without thinking, the best choice is not always made. That concerns me.

Yet another reason I should move to San Diego. Farther from all these fault lines.