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…

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.

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.

• 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

• 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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.