The Decision

This is M Dog, the light of my life. He has the worst mood swings in our house and knows how to give attitude. If he were a girl, he would surely demand to be called, "Princess". I think he has taken on some of mommy's qualities, including his adorableness. :) Aiight, back to the story...

Ok I think I simplified my decision too much. It wasn’t just about money vs. stress. I knew that I couldn’t make a decision based solely off money because it had already led me to a very dark, depressing hole, i.e. my first defense job. Also, I knew I could deal with stress. In fact, I do my best work under extreme pressure. I recognize that I need the constant threat of imminent, disastrous consequences to push me. But, did I want to deal with that pressure day in, day out? The company was very prestigious and known for its cutting edge technology and the benefits were amazing. Could I really turn it down? This company had given me the most rigorous screening (2 phone interviews, a 5 hour in-person interview and an actual test) and I had come out on top. That was something to be proud of in itself and showed me that I had what it takes to make it at this particular company, but did I want to?

On the other hand, the second company barely had a screening process and I knew I had the job pretty much from the interviewer’s first line, “I know you’re too smart for us, but let me tell you why this company is an awesome place to work.” Everyone was in shorts and flip flops, there were no miserable, depressing excuses for work stations (read: cubicles) and I was even told I would get my own office. Helllllllllllz yeah! I would report to the CEO and I would have a huge impact on change if I took the job.

I struggled with the decision. The first company was offering slightly more money, but they were also stringing me along during the interview process. It took them forever to give me an answer, and to be honest, it soured me on the company. But did I want a job that was almost ridiculously easy to get? Also, I would be starting a new department and the role wasn’t quite developed at the time. This made me slightly nervous.

In the end, I chose the laid back company because I saw it as a better fit for me as a person right now. After traveling for 6 months, doing whatever the hell I wanted, and answering to no one (well, HBF liked to think he kept me in check), I don’t think a high energy/high stress position was where my mind was at.

After I accepted the position, I had immediate buyer’s remorse. Did I make the right decision? Is the other company better? Did I chicken out on life? I struggled with these thoughts for about 2 days and ultimately came to the conclusion that I couldn’t do a damn thing about my decision. It was done, and I was officially employed after 1 year off. I felt relief and very, very nervous. I hadn’t worked in a year.. What if there were crazy changes that had taken place in the work world and I had no idea about them? What if there were 3 shells instead of toilet paper? (That’s right, a Demolition Man reference) I didn’t want to look like an idiot, but maybe that just couldn’t be helped.

I had 4 more weeks of freedom, and I did my best not to think about work. AT. ALL. I went home to hang out with the fam for 2 of those weeks, and it was bliss. No more self doubt, no more tears, no more indecision. I could finally enjoy my time that I was not working, only to have it end in 4 weeks. Aint that a pisser. But hey, it’s my own fault. My mind works in weird, wonderful and sometimes irrational ways. HBF can attest to that. Lemme just give a shout out to him for sticking by me through these hard times, and poking me gently when I needed it. You da best.

A Turning Point (aka Part 4)

Dark times people… Dark times. But not too dark. I was alive and healthy, had HBF to support me and could basically do whatever I wanted, if only I could decide. All of my necessities were taken care of so my mind was free to wander the ends of the earth and figure out what the next step in my life would be. Unfortunately, my brain didn’t get very creative and insisted on Law & Order for nourishment. I was happy to oblige. As I tried (and pretty much failed) to teach myself Dreamweaver in order to create my pet sitting website, I would invariably let any small defeat ruin my day. If I couldn’t get a button placed right, I immediately wanted to take a nap. If a page wasn’t loading correctly, I would take a ‘break’ and watch TV for 5 hours. Basically, I was highly unmotivated and used any excuse to do nothing. But ultimately, doing nothing made me so unhappy. I was definitely ashamed most days when HBF would come home and ask me what I did today. I would try to elaborate the tiniest thing I accomplished in order to sound important. Sad, I know. I was very sad.

But, it wasn’t all sad. There were definitely fun times, and they usually happened when I wasn’t home by myself all day. I say by myself, but I wasn’t totally alone. M dog was there, but he doesn’t say much. Occasionally he winks at me, but I haven’t quite figured out what his winks mean. Most days we would go on walks, but there were days when I couldn’t even get off the couch. Or rather, I didn’t want to get off the couch. Let me give credit where credit is due..

I came to the realization that I needed to be challenged in life. Would I be happy walking dogs and picking up poo every day? Probably not. I made up my mind to start looking for an engineering job, but I vowed to apply only for jobs that were in my actual field. This presented a little bit of a problem, as there aren’t very many job openings for actual industrial engineers. But, we go by many different names in the business world, i.e. process engineer, manufacturing engineer, quality engineer, and the list goes on… HBF had always told me that I would be a really good project manager since I like to boss people (him) around, and I took that to heart. I started looking for project manager positions as well. Now, I had my rules: Only jobs with my specific engineering or project manager jobs, no defense jobs, make sure I submitted a tailored resume and cover letter to each possible position.. blah blah. Translation: I was actually going to try to get a real job.

Now, if you’ve been recently unemployed, then you can prolly relate to a lot of what I’m saying. But you’ll relate most to my next sentence: Applying for jobs is the second suckiest thing to do, but ultimately trumped by interviewing. More on that later. I started applying to jobs, but I didn’t get many responses. I had a company call me up randomly, telling me they found my resume on Monster.com. I went for an interview and the guy really liked me. The only problem was that this job broke one of my rules. It wasn’t a real engineering job. It was sort of an engineering job, in that I’d be estimating how much it would cost to put alarm systems in a building, but I also had to sell these alarm systems too. From past experience, I knew that I wasn’t really cut out to be a salesman, but this guy that I interviewed with said these things sold themselves. I was slightly intrigued, and agreed to go on a second interview with the owners of the company up in LA. The guy prepped me, saying the owners are all salesman, but he thought I would do great and had no worries about me passing it.

The interview was pretty much like grinding glass into my eye. All these guys wanted to know about was my selling experience (basically 0) and why the hell I had left my previous job in a horrible economy to go traveling. They left the door open so my fan boy could listen in to me getting a stern talking to, but afterwards he was still sold on me. He was determined to talk the owners into hiring me even though I pretty much bombed the interview. Talking with HBF, I could tell he sort of wanted me to take it because it would get me off my butt. But, he also wanted me to be happy and encouraged me to make the choice for my happiness, whatever that was. I turned down the job and continued to sit on the couch, still a little sad.

The beginning of the end of this little saga began with an e-mail. The e-mail was from my professor with a job opportunity. An older alumni was going to quit her job at a hospital and wanted to recommend someone to follow her to make a smooth transition. My professor knew I was looking and offered to pass my resume to her. I was ecstatic, but first he wanted to check out my resume. We met later in the week and in no uncertain terms he told me my resume was lame. It had no buzzwords and lacked the right experience to get the jobs I was looking for. Not that I didn’t have the experience, I just wasn’t presenting it at all. Shocked, I took his advice and basically rewrote my resume that night and to my delight, he loved it. He submitted it, and I waited. Impatiently.

It was actually a job I was interested in, but it wasn’t typical engineering. The job was to help make a hospital more efficient, working projects that would reduce labor time, or save the hospital money. Basically, using my brain to make things better. I started to hunt on the internet for those specific jobs, but there weren’t many. I kept applying with my new and improved resume and the response was overwhelming: 5 companies wanted to interview me within a span of 2 weeks. I did both phone interviews and in-person interviews. I had a 5 hour interview with 10 people at one company, and even had to take a test (my fault though. I may have eluded to knowing something that I didn’t know.. and they wanted to test me on that knowledge. Aw shiiiiii… I studied for a day and a half and passed with flying colors). All these interviews sucked the life out of my since every brain cell was on high alert for hours at a time, ready to answer any question posed. The more interviews I had, the better my stories got and the more responsibilities I had in my previous positions. I didn’t lie per se, I just exaggerated, but I had no doubt in my mind that I could have done any of the jobs I interviewed for.

I did get my booty handed to me at one point, when they brought out the mathematical equations that I hadn’t looked at in many years and expected me to do something with them. I kinda sat there, stunned, and mumbled something incoherent and felt like an idiot. Needless to say, I didn’t get that job. And I vowed to be more prepared in the future.

At one interview, they didn’t interview me at all. Rather, the guy exclaimed ‘We know you’re too smart for us, but let me tell you why you should work here’. He put forth a very compelling argument and I believed it was definitely a place where I could work. People walked around in flip flops and jeans and there were no cubicles at all. I would get my own office, but I wasn’t exactly sure what I would be doing, and that worried me. I knew I was the type of person that needed concrete projects that would produce a result and action would be taken. No more busy work, and no more pretending to be busy. I wanted to actually make a difference in a company. Is that so wrong?

Out of the 5 companies, I received 2 offers from 2 very different companies. One company was super intense, high level of responsibility, high number of work hours, great benefits, great salary. The other company was laid back, smaller but growing, benefits a little lacking and a smaller salary, although more than I had made at my last job. So, it was like this: More money, more stress, or less money, less stress. Hmm.. Which job would you take?

The Aftermath: Part 3

Part 3 is complicated. Part 3 deals with my inner psyche and of course, so HBF tells me, I’m complicated. While in Oregon, I can honestly say I was hiding out. I didn’t really want to see any of my friends (family was ok) and I’m not sure why. Maybe it was because I had been spending 24 hours 7 days a week with HBF and I didn’t know how to talk to anyone else. I couldn’t poke some random friend in the ribs and make him scream like a girl if I didn’t like what he said. Another friend wouldn’t be able to tolerate playing cribbage for hours and able to entertain me all the while with witty banter. Or maybe they could. I think really it came down to the fact that I had a hard time relating to people. This is already tough for me, as girls are usually too crazy for me to tolerate, but boys just aren’t girls. Make sense? Hmm, maybe I’m crazy too.. (HBF hurt his neck by violently agreeing with this point). Ok, who cares about the reason, but I did hide out. I hung out with mi madre and absolutely drank up any television I could (along with milk). All the while, HBF had made his way down to San Diego and was trying to start life again. Life goal #1: Find a house. This was tricky, as I was up in Oregon and I had a pretty strong opinion on what I want in a house. I would look at craigslist and send HBF possible options and then proceed to pester him until he went and looked at them. He would send me back videos and I would ultimately veto them for one reason or another, usually because they didn’t have a dishwasher. After about 2 weeks of this process, HBF got fed up and demanded I come down to SD and help find us a house. The only problem: M dog. I had to bring him down with me and since we didn’t have a house, where would we stay? I don’t think any of our friends even had a yard and I hated the thought of imposing on someone with my smelly dog for who knows how long. Logistics, logistics. I finally told HBF I would only come down if he came back up to get me because I didn’t want to drive alone. Apparently he was just that desperate (and loving) and he flew up to Oregon, had delicious Easter brunch with the fam, and we started the trek down south. About 2 days before he was scheduled to fly to Oregon, he found a great place near Mission Hills and I was pretty happy with it. So, he put a deposit down and our logistics nightmare ended. We could move straight in.

The ride down was pretty uneventful, and by uneventful I mean my car broke down and could only go 45 mph for the last 200 miles to Santa Rosa. But, that’s the beauty of dating a mechanical genius: HBF fixed it and after a wonderful night hanging with HBF’s parents, we were on the road again going 90 (sorry mom). We arrived in San Diego on April 8th.

HBF had set up a sweet deal with his previous company to work 3 days a week while looking for another job. He was bringing in enough income to float us for awhile, so there wasn’t too much pressure to find a job. In the first few weeks, it was sweet. HBF would have 4 day weekends and I had non stop weekends. But then, HBF got a real job, and he started wondering aloud when I was going to follow suit. He had a good point, but I also started wondering aloud, louder than him, that really I had no idea what I wanted to do with myself and maybe I should figure that out before I found another job. He wondered even louder when I was going to figure that out and I would give him the evil eye. The stink eye. Whatever you want to call it, I was giving it to him. But inside, I wondered if I would ever know what I wanted to do with myself and these thoughts were very troublesome.

Here’s the thing: I had spent a crap load of money on college and would continue spending a crapload on college for the next 20 years thanks to my crushing educational debt. I studied engineering, and I felt stupid for even entertaining the idea that I wouldn’t get another engineering job. Of course I would get an engineering job! I owe all this money, right? I studied it and liked it, right? Well engineering classes and engineering jobs are very very different, people, and anyone who tells you different should be poked in the eye. Hard. My last 3 engineering jobs were terrible (see previous post) and I just couldn’t bear the thought of repeating my misery again. Every engineering job posting I read filled me with dread, and none of them were really what I went to school for anyways. My heart was telling me to pursue my love: Animals. I volunteered at the local animal shelter and I loved it. Giving those dogs and cats love and helping them get adopted into good homes after they have had horrendous lives made me feel really good, and it was really the only thing that I was passionate about. This led me to conclude that maybe I should be pursuing a job in animal rescue. The only problem was that any available job was minimum wage. Now, this looks like a black and white issue. Passion vs. money. But it wasn’t just about that. I wanted a job I wasn’t embarrassed about and that I could explain exactly what I did and people would understand. I would have been mortified to explain that I went to engineering school, and now I work for 9 bucks shoveling dog poo. Or, now I’m some ‘systems’ engineer that goes and sits in my cube for 8 hours and puts together PowerPoint presentations that no one pay any attention to.

Neither of these options sounded very good to me, and I let this be my excuse for inaction. I would volunteer, I would look for jobs, but I would never really pursue either path. Now, you’re prolly asking yourself, ‘what the heck did she do from April 8th until she started her job on July 26th?’ This is a very good question, and I have a few answers for you.
Accomplishment #1: Watched all 11 seasons of Law & Order: SVU available on Netflix.
Accomplishment #2: Watched all 6 seasons of Law & Order: Criminal Intent on Netflix

Let me stop here. I know you are all galled at just that amount of TV that I watched, but you gotta remember, I had like 15 weeks of totally free time. I basically could do anything I wanted (except find a job) and I guess what I wanted to do was watch TV. There was no one to talk to, since everyone else worked. HBF would measure the success of my day by how much time I spent outside. Each day he would come home from work and ask the inevitable question: ‘Did you go outside today?’ 80% of the time I would fail. The TV was like a black hole I could fall in to and not think. When HBF would get home, the brain would turn on and the animal/engineering debate would ensue. There were tears, yelling, outrage, hugs, indecision, etc, etc… Each day I would come to a different conclusion of what I was going to do. There was a time I thought I would start my own pet sitting business, but even then I waffled. I didn’t really want to do that, but I had no idea what else to do…

This is a really long story, but the end is nigh. Stay tuned for part 4.

The Aftermath: Part 2

Wait, wait, wait. I skipped a semi ridiculous part of the story in part 1. Let’s back up to the Philippines, specifically, we’re in Boracay, I have a tan now (it’s true!) and we are about 20 hours from leaving paradise. We spent our last day on the beach of course, soaking up the rays and contemplating what life was going to be like when we returned home. Just as I couldn’t fathom what it was going to be like traveling, I had a really hard time picturing how life was going to unfold when we stepped foot on US soil. It was definitely a quiet, introverted day, both of us saying our goodbyes to the land that had given us so many adventures, blah blah blah. Since we were now tight wads, and our plane left very early in the morning from Manila, we decided that we would skimp and not get a hotel for the night. You read that right. We were going to stay up all night in order to sleep on the plane. The plan was flawless! And by flawless I mean it was a pain in the butt and around 3:00 am I was really wanting to get in a bed and cursing my cheapness. When we arrived in Manila around 8:00 pm, we tried to drop our bags at the airport so we didn’t have to lug them around. Wellllll, the Manila airport doesn’t have anything like that. Then we had a big miscommunication with our taxi driver, who was trying to take us to who knows where.. There was yelling, and there was no paying. Yeah, it was that bad. We eventually made it to the Mall of America (hooray!) for dinner and had a delectable meal, even with our 30 lb bags attached to us. Our next stop: 24 hour internet café. We had decided to spend the rest of our time surfin the web instead of sleeping. So, fast forward about 6 hours and it’s 4 o’clock in the morning, I’m all surfed out (yeah, it happened) and we roll into the airport to check our bags. The flight to Hong Kong isn’t all that long, and I have to go through another round of convincing HBF that we can accomplish Mission: Impossible. Oh, and HBF has left his coat at the internet café, so he has no warmth. Good thing the airplane has blankets. Unfortunately, SFO does not and he paid dearly for his forgetfulness (see previous post).

Ok. Fast forward, Hong Kong, hooray! Get the watch, hooray! Hong Kong to SFO, hooray! Flight canceled to Portland, boo cry curse scream cry again. Made it home, hooray! Loved on Midas, bunny hop whine. Bed, hooray!

The next few days are a blur of delicious food, wonderful milk, hot showers, a soft bed, and seeing the family. It ended up the company that I did a phone interview with wanted to interview me in person, only they were in Berkeley. Time was of the essence, but I wasn’t ready to head south yet. I had just gotten home! I needed more pampering time.. but HBF was ready to head down to Santa Rosa to see his parents. So, we devised a plan. We would drive down to Berkeley in his car, I would do the interview in Berkeley and fly home, meanwhile he would continue on down to visit his parents and eventually visit his friends in SD, too. At this point, there was a very real possibility that we would move to the Bay Area, but all of our worldly possessions were in San Diego. The logistics of everything is mind boggling, but stay with me. If we did end up in Berkeley, HBF would already be down in SD to get our crap and hopefully I wouldn’t have to be a part of moving it all.

The interview went well and we spent the rest of the day in San Francisco and checking out Berkeley. It was a glorious, sunny day, the kind they rarely get in March, and we kind of felt that the universe was trying to tell us that the Bay Area was the right place. I wasn’t super jazzed about the job, but I’ve never been super jazzed about any job and it was really our only bite. There was an option for HBF to go back to his old job, but he really didn’t want to and we were both really feelin the Bay Area that day. I got on the plane thinking I would take the job and we were moving to SF as long as the offer was decent.

Decent was the operative word, and decent the offer was not. It was such a low-ball offer that I was kind of upset. But, how upset could I be? It was really the only thing on the table… I immediately didn’t want to take it, but what about the signs given by the universe? What about the blissful, sunny day in Berkeley the one day we came? Apparently the universe was drunk that day because there was no way I was selling my soul out to work for a fraction of what I was making before. Ok call me greedy, but at the time I would have had to keep HBF afloat too, since he didn’t have a job or any prospects. It just wasn’t enough. So, I turned down the offer and HBF and I decided to go another way. HBF would take it for the team and work part time at his old job to bring in some income while we both looked for new jobs in SD. What a man.  I wasn’t stoked about going back to SD.. I had basically said my goodbyes and I had said throughout the trip that I was done with San Diego. I had been there a long time and I just didn’t think it was the place I wanted to be at the moment. I always thought we would end up somewhere else, but… Here I was, agreeing to go back to SD. Sometimes ya just gotta go with it, and that’s what I did. Well, sort of. I stayed up in Oregon livin the dream life at my parents’ house for as long as possible. HBF had to drag me out of Oregon kicking and screaming because I knew as soon as I stepped foot into SD, the pressure was on to find a job. I just didn’t want to face that. AT ALL.

Friends and family would ask me constantly what I was going to do now. I would play it all cool and pretend I had it all figured out and that it was no big deal.. ‘I’ll get a job, no problem.’ But inside, I had no idea. My 3 previous ‘engineering’ jobs were horrifically soul crushing and I just wasn’t sure if my sanity could take another job like that. I put ‘engineering’ in quotes because the term engineering was in my title, but I don’t think I ever did any real engineering. Maybe if you count being a PowerPoint master engineering, but I sure don’t. Anywho, the thought of getting another job that I hated gave me anxiety and I was so turned off of engineering. The cube farms, being a minion and not really understanding what I actually do or what impact I have on anything is basically my idea of spiritual murder and I didn’t want to take that anymore. *Deep breath* Go to a happy place Go to a happy place Go to a happy place.. Oh wait, I don’t work at those places any more. Thank GOODNESS.

Part 3 to come.

The Aftermath: Part 1

Alright it’s been awhile. I’ve been putting off writing this blog because I wanted to wait until I was back on the right path and not embarrassed to talk about my life. I know, I know, I just explored the world for 6 months with HBF. How could I possibly be embarrassed? I literally just did what 90% of the population dreams of doing.. But there’s The Aftermath. I knew the day would come when we would return home and have to integrate myself back into the daily grind, i.e. working, cooking, cleaning, bathing on a daily basis, etc. That day was always soooo far away that I never really worried about it. Ok ok, I did worry about it, but HBF would always tell me, ‘No stress on holiday’ with some weird Russian/Eastern European accent and I would put off thinking about it for a week or so. Also, while in the Philippines, I did a phone interview with a company that I would not have minded working for and I had high hopes that I would have a job fairly soon. I wasn’t sure that I wanted a job (ever), but I knew that at some point I would (probably) need to get a job to carry my weight in the relationship. Everything seemed to be falling into place at the time. I was ready to go home, see the famdamily, then pick up where I left off before we left, albeit in a much happier and rested mindset. Well, things did not go according to (my) plan and I had somewhat of a hard time dealing with it. What follows is the story of The Aftermath, divided into parts because I think it’s too long.

I was beyond excited to go home. Like, tear my hair out dance on tables excited. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Philippines SO MUCH, but I hadn’t seen my mommy and daddy in 6 months and I was dying for some family time (it’s a sickness). 6 months was the longest I had gone without seeing a family member ever in my entire life . I was also soooo excited to see Midas. I had a mild fear that he wouldn’t remember me, but I still couldn’t wait to see my lil lion dog. But first, there was a mission to accomplish, Mission Impossible, according to HBF, but I had faith. El Dub reeeeeaaally wanted a ‘Rolex’, but the last one I mailed home got stolen right out of the mail. Thank you Bankok postal service for that. I forced HBF to book flights home that went through Hong Kong so we could go find El Dub another watch. The layover in Hong Kong was 4 hours, but we had to:
• Deplane
• Go through Customs (Our bags were checked through all the way to USA)
• Get on a train to Kowloon
• Find the guy who sold us the first watch
• Talk him down to the price we paid last time
• Get back on the train to the airport
• Get through airport security
• Be at our gate at least 30 minutes before the plane left since it was an international flight

Now, I had no doubts that my plan would work, but HBF had some reservations. It took some coaxing as well as a thought out timeline of ‘turn back’ time (if we hadn’t reached a certain step by such and such time, we turn back) until he finally agreed we may be able to do it. We power walked everywhere, and it took awhile to find the right guy, but in the end, we got the watch and we got back to our plane. Mission Impossible = Mission Accomplished! I knew El Dub would be so happy and I was happy to drag HBF along in order to make a wish come true.

The flights to the US were seamless and even enjoyable. I think I slept for like 20 hours and felt pretty good by the time we were deplaning in San Francisco around 8:00 am. It was our last leg left until I could reunite with M dog and the fam. My excitement was palpable. That is, until the flight that would take us to Portland was canceled. Enter hysterical tears. We were so close, but so far away. They automatically rebooked us on a flight the next day, but I was not about to stay in SF when I could find a way to make it to Portland. At this point, it’s 10 am and I’m thinking there has to be a flight to Portland that we could catch that day. Unfortunately, everyone else that was booked on the plane had that thought as well. We found an airline representative that was moved by our story of no sleep, international travel and my yearning to see my family (I was not ashamed to use my tears to gain some sort of advantage) and she was able to book us on a flight at 5:00 pm. Ok, so we now have 7 hours to kill at SFO, but HBF has no sweatshirt, no pants either, and he’s wearing flips. For some reason, SFO had the air conditioning on full blast and it was like 40 degrees in the airport. He’s cold. And for HBF to admit he’s cold then he reeeaally must be cold. So, we started shopping around for a sweatshirt that he could possibly wear. The problem was, we just got back from Asia where everything is like $2 and under. These sweatshirts were at least $35 and HBF was balking at the idea of spending that kind of money so soon out of the land of cheap things. We were not able to find a sweatshirt for $2, so HBF did not buy a sweatshirt. He huddled close to me instead and continually muttered about how expensive things were. At 8 pm (our flight was delayed, of course) we boarded the plane for home with our sanity barely intact and HBF’s lips looking a little blue.

The welcoming party at PDX was just as I pictured: My parents plus a sign that said ‘Welcome Home’ greeted us as we exited the terminal. It was such a happy reunion and so great to see my parents! All the bad feelings were washed away with hugs and I was filled with glee at finally being home and relief as well. Midas remembered us and marked our return with lots of bunny hopping and whining (as is his custom when he is excited). I was home. I took a long hot shower and fell into the softest bed I had been in since leaving home 6 months prior. It was heaven.

Part 2 to come soon.