Moving, Again

When I was a kid, we weren't one of those families that moved.  I never, ever had to change schools.  My family moved once, from a trailer house into a house, when I was a toddler, and that was all it ever was.  We swapped bedrooms a few times, rearranged furniture regularly, remodeled and remodeled and remodeled, even had our address change when the county installed rural street names, but my house was always my house.

From 2009-2013, I moved every three to nine months (thanks, college).  Honestly, I got to be a pro at it.  I could fit everything, including a tv, mini fridge, and microwave, in my Buick sedan.  It became a cycle of knowing when to unpack, what to leave behind, and when to start bringing things back home to make those last days of school less cluttered.

After graduation, I stayed with my parents for eleven months.  Then I moved again, into my new apartment onsite at my job, with no firm idea how long I would be there or where I would go after.

It's time to move again.  Almost 15 months later, I look around my apartment, and my thoughts are all about how to pack and which items can leave first.  It doesn't feel like I've been here so long, and yet every day I've been here also feels like a week.  So many things have accumulated in my apartment.  As my first time living alone, I supplied everything in this room, no more college roommates to split half of the household items with, and an entire space to hold whatever craft supplies and books and papers my heart desires.

With just a couple days left, I'm at the juncture of needing to pack and having zero desire to pack.  I've already taken home several boxes, and a few more are all ready to go, but I hate committing to what I won't need in the next couple of days.  Knowing how little time I will have to do any packing on move day is just making me that much more boxes in by the entire process.

The only good thing about packing and moving is purging.  I have already taken my garbage out three times this week.  Things that had gotten shoved on a shelf or mixed in with a stack of "keepers" are now exposed and on their way out.  Old catalogs? Recycled.  Dried up pens?  Tossed. Out with the old really does usher in the new - and I am so, so ready for the new.

But I still hesitate before I throw some things away, even some obvious things.  I know that I can be a bit of a hoarder, that I don't always let things go when I should, and I have those moments about the move and job as well.  This is where I'm comfortable, this is where I'm safe, and this is where I know my place.  It takes courage to change; I've never considered myself particularly brave.  But here we are.

"...If he fails, at least fails daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory or defeat."        --Theodore Roosevelt

Sometimes You Quit; Or, When Your Boss Cries

I have never quit a job.

Me leaving a job (with the exception of one time I was let go - the story behind which would be an entire blog) has always been inevitable because I was moving to college or home from college, a predetermined going away point that just tick-tocked closer and closer.

That changed this week.

Now, I have known my boss almost my entire life.  My brother and I went to school with her two kids.  She gave me my first job in high school.  She handed me my diploma when I walked across the stage at my high school commencement.  And while she's not exactly a friend, she has played a huge role in my life.  I appreciate the many, many things she has done to help me, especially in the last ten years, despite the fact that we often don't see things the same way.

There's a level of stilted-ness that comes about when you know your boss is trying to sell the business and that your job might not necessarily exist when that happens.  You have to watch what you say, because if the business doesn't sell, you still have to work for her, but at the same time, there are serious questions that need to be addressed.  Knowing if anyone has looked or mad an offer completely changes your timeline.  At the same time, though, you then become responsible for what you tell those below you - you need them to keep working and keep the business running, but you don't want to blindside them with a complete loss of income either.  It's a tightrope.

The tightrope is made thinner by the fact that I don't enjoy my job.  And not just because it doesn't challenge me or I don't enjoy the work, but because I have some fundamental struggles with decisions that are being made at the top and I am burned out from being on call 24 hours a day.

It is time for me to move on.  I know that, and I've felt it for a while, but I had a strange little plan of sticking out another nine months or so before really starting to look elsewhere.  Then a job opened up - not necessarily my Dream Job, but at least a dreamy one - in my desired field, with a raise and benefits.  It was a long road, but I got it.

And suddenly I had to tell my boss that I got a new job, when I hadn't even told her I was applying for one.  As I was telling her, all she could say was, "Ah, Sarah," in this keening way that reminded me of the way my dog whimpers when someone leaves without her.  "What are we going to do without you?"

I replied tongue-in-cheek and excused myself.  Only later that evening did I hear that after I left, her husband found her sitting at the desk, teary-eyed over my abandonment.  I can't say I'm surprised by this, but I wonder if maybe it isn't even more of a sign that I need to go somewhere else, that I allowed myself to become indispensable in a place where I had no desire to remain.

While she was crying, I was just happy for this chapter of my life to close.

Rejection, Acceptance, and Faith

I live on site at my job.  It's 26 feet from my apartment to my office.  This sometimes leads to awkward, strange mornings - me sitting at the desk taking a reservation when my boss unlocks the door on my day off, running for the phone still in a towel after my shower, or a renter knocking on my door having locked himself out.

Or, as it was about a month ago, a realtor trying to open my bedroom door.

Luckily, I lock the doors at night, otherwise the poor realtor, potential buyers (a high school friend of mine and her mom - seriously, small towns can get so damn awkward), and my boss would have had quite the sight.

The day the realtor woke me up was the same day I submitted a job application in a nervous, hopeful fog.  I had applied for this job once before, senior year of college when I still had a full semester of class ahead.  I never heard a peep.  A lot changed in two years, and I held my breath as I prayed over the process, sure that God's timing was so obvious here.

Three hours later, I had an interview.
The interview ended with them saying I had "an awesome set of skills."  They told me the decision would be three days.
Three days later, they told me three more days.
Three days later, the opportunity was gone.

They were very complimentary.  Basically, it had come down to me and someone else, and the someone edged me out.  If another opportunity came up, they would love to have me.

A nice rejection doesn't make you feel any less rejected.

I sat in the bottom of my closet and cried as I called my SO and my mom.  I ate an absurd amount of calories.  I bought some vodka.  I argued with friends, because sometimes they just don't say the right things and sometimes you just don't care enough to be nice about it.  And mostly, I felt crummy and boxed in and just not good enough.

7 days later, everything changed.

I was checking my email during a particularly slow moment at work.  The woman who would have been my boss made an appearance.  In essence, the someone else had backed out, and they wanted me - was I still interested?

Um, yes.


So now here I sit, filling my last two weeks before moving into The New, The Different, and The Unknown.  I spent those seven days resigning myself to staying where I was, to believing that the right thing would come, that there was a reason I wasn't "there" yet.  And now it's all changed again.  The world is so topsy-turvy sometimes, so hard to reckon with.  But I believe those seven days were good for me, if only to serve as a reminder that I need to accept myself and accept that I won't always be the best, the brightest, and the winner.

The Post-Vacation Cranks

Last week, I took a five-day, much-needed, long-awaited vacation with my significant other (long distance relationships require vacations).  It was, in a word, glorious.

And then I came back to reality.  Which means a week of babysitting, meetings, and motel work, all compounding the fact that I would do anything to be back on vacation.

Is it just me, or does going on vacation actually make real life harder to live?  I have had such a case of the post-vacation cranks that I quite frankly don't want to be around anyone but a few chosen people, none of whom are actually less than a few thousand miles away.

So, how do you, I, or anyone else go about getting rid of those return-related regrets?  Frankly, I don't know.  Keeping busy seemed to help temporarily, but today I'm going to try making a list of five things about being home for which I am grateful, in the hopes that an expression of gratitude will seep into my emotions.

1. The technology that lets me get in touch with loved ones across continents.
2. My pillow - I have a memory foam pillow that is so much better than anything you will put your head on at a hotel.
3. Not living out of a suitcase.
4. Being able to cook what I want instead of eating out (talk about a price tag) every meal.
5. A chance to make money, in the hopes of saving up for another vacation very soon!

You Might Be a Hotel Maid if...

I recently went back to work at the same motel where I worked in high school.  This Memorial Day weekend has been a typically busy holiday weekend, and I will have worked three cleaning shifts by the time the weekend is up.  I will say this: cleaning motel rooms does not get any easier, cooler, or less disgusting after college.  It does, however, leave me with a LOT of time by myself to think (I keep forgetting my iPod, so talking to myself happens), and I have come up with a list of idiosyncrasies that occur among hotel maids.  And so, a la Jeff Foxworthy, you might be a hotel maid if:

1. You can make a queen bed in under four minutes, but the bed you sleep in hasn't been made since you last washed the sheets (quite possibly a while ago).
2. You come home from work with pockets stuffed full of used dryer sheets that got folded into the laundry.
3. When staying at a hotel, you always tip the maid.
4. You haven't dusted your own home for the better part of a year.
5. You have a favorite cleaner for wood, tile, stainless, fiberglass, and carpet, but none of them are made by the same company.
6. You can spot a hair on the floor at twenty feet.
7. You can't accomplish anything if your hair isn't in a ponytail.
8. When staying at a hotel, you refuse to brush your hair unless standing on carpet (because it's easier to vacuum it up than wipe it off the bathroom tile).
9. You want to physically harm anyone with the audacity to actually use the in-room microwave.

Thank God I don't work for a chain.

I wear jeans and a T-shirt.

Any fellow maids out there?  What did I miss?

Be safe this Memorial Day!