Still Breathing.

If I’ve been a little quiet the last couple of weeks it’s because a) the atrocity of the election, and b) I was laid off two weeks ago. The first part of that sentence makes me way more sad than the second part. 

My layoff was not really a surprise. There was a hiring freeze, so there was no recruiting to be done, and running the office and HR for a staff of 15 was not a full time job. Honestly, I was bored and just sticking around so I wouldn’t look like I was jumping around again on future resumes. The office felt cold for the last few months. But I do miss most of my colleagues. They were (are) a good group. 

Since I have savings, I decided to take a week off before I dove into job hunting 100% and after the election on Tuesday night, I could not have been happier to not have to show my face to the world or be forced to talk to people in an office. The Democrats fucked up and nominated a bad candidate (not saying she was unqualified, just not a good candidate because she was too strongly disliked). I never thought Clinton had it in the bag, despite what polls told us, and my deepest fears were confirmed that the American people are, collectively, pretty stupid. Clinton included. She didn’t even GO to Wisconsin. Come on. 

How did I cope on Wednesday? I ordered a Trump cat toy off Amazon so she could scratch his face off and went to yoga. 

The toy didn’t go as planned. She likes to sleep with it. I pretend she’s smothering it.

I’ve spent the last two weeks going to yoga daily, cooking, sending out resumes, chatting with recruiters, and hanging out with my cat (her birthday is tomorrow, so I’ll tell her you all say happy birthday). I’m also shocked at how much fun unemployment is with a cat. Speaking of cats, I’m volunteering with a few adoption organizations to clean and feed cats who are waiting to be adopted at the UWS Petcos. This is also fun. And kind of sad. I might adopt 5 more cats. Who knows. No promises.  

And while contemplating my next steps, given my savings and severance, I’m considering doing a 200-hour yoga teacher training course in January with one of my favorite teachers. I don’t know if I necessarily want to teach yoga, but it’s been a constant thing in my life for so many years now and I want to deepen my understanding of the practice. So, I might sign up for that and do temp work until then to keep myself afloat. 

Lastly, I’ve been sucking at this blogging thing lately. I’m still backlogged on my Poland posts and I have so many things that I could just ramble about. So, I’m going to try write once a day if it kills me. Starting today, starting now. Here’s to post #1!

(Really, lastly, don’t forget to donate to Planned Parenthood.)

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Old Times

It’s only my first week at my new job and I’m already loving it. I’m working with awesome people and doing stuff that I love. #startuplife 

Tuesday in particular was the best though, it was really totally like old times at the last start-up that I worked at. I am, once again, working within spitting distance of my friend Ben and there’s a Calexico cart at the end of my block in Madison Square Park. So what’d we do for lunch? We did our thing: meeting up for burritos. Delicious burritos. The best burritos that you can get from a cart in the city, in my opinion.

Later on in the day, the marketing associate, who sits next to me, and the CTO asked about ClubMed (the 5 minute meditation break that I used to lead at my old job). Apparently this really sparked their interest when I mentioned it in my interview a couple of weeks ago. 

So, when 2pm rolled around, we all gathered in the conference room and took a 5-minute pause in our day. It’s a small company – 12 people – and I was shocked, and happy, to see that everyone got in on it.

If I’d have stayed an extra week at my temp gig, I’d be miserable right now. I’m so glad I made the decision to cut it short and start my new journey. 

The Week in Numbers

I don’t know why I always get so freaked out when I have to search for a job because I am literally a machine when it comes to job hunting. Here’s how I’m doing so far:

• Jobs applied for: 47
• Recruiters met with: 9 (and let’s say I met with an extra 5 who weren’t on my calendar.)
• In-person interviews: 2
• Phone interviews: 3
• Other emails sent to contacts: 10,000 (that’s an exaggeration but you get it.)

I have a call tomorrow and two in-person interviews on Thursday.  And this is just in my first week. Like I said: machine.

Searching for a job is a full-time job, and although it’s not always fun, at least I still have time for yoga.  I have a full day tomorrow and in between appointments I’ll likely apply to the 13 job listings that I found this morning (having a Macbook Air is a lifesaver – so easy to carry around).

I had to stop by my old office today to pick up a bag of things that I’d forgotten and one of the account girls followed me out the door, hugged me, told me she was so sorry and that they missed me already, and then confided that she’d resigned yesterday. Maybe I smiled, just a little bit.

Everything’s alright.