Working On A Quirky Graph

How many balls can you juggle without dropping one? How often do you bother to try and figure out how many different tasks/opportunities/obligations you can work to keep moving in the same direction before something falls or you let someone down? And when you do let someone down, is it the person you’ve promised the result to or is it yourself for dropping said ball?

This last month has been this odd gathering of energy that even storms haven’t even been able to blow clean until this last week.

I’ve been starting a new habit with Bear, walking, feeding, cuddling and talking to another being in the house that mostly has no idea what the heck I’m talking about. All he knows is I make noises and some of them are repetitious at this point, and he sort of realizes that I’m talking to him. The tone is the key, but even then I have to remember I’m the adult and if he has done something or exhibited a behavior I’m unhappy with, then it falls on me to train him correctly or pay better attention to what he’s doing.

Does that reminder make me feel better after he filled one of my shoes with pee? No, I cannot say that it did. Especially since there is no cleaning these leather/suede shoes and I’m not in the mood to spend the money on a replacement pair.

Meanwhile, earlier in the month another company reached out, interested in me and what I do and wanted to chat. In the second to last chat (there were 5. That is a lot of chatting) I asked what the hardest thing about the job was at the moment. The answer, ‘People aren’t buying’ kind of stuttered me to a stop. While not surprising due to the state of the world at the moment, was surprising to hear in an interview process. Perhaps that was why I completely tanked the last group demo interview. I didn’t prepare with anyone. I didn’t immerse myself in their systems to learn what they wanted and I definitely didn’t ask any questions to get a better idea of what they wanted to see. Truthfully, the only way I could’ve done worse would’ve been to set fire to their entire platform.

A friend suggested I had self sabotaged, and I’m not sure I can argue against that. I’m not upset I was very politely turned down for the role. I learned a lot in the process, as it has been years since I’ve done any real interviewing (I don’t think I can qualify what I did at the beginning of the year as real interviewing) and I’ve never done the demo process. But I’m also secure in the knowledge that should the numbers continue their trends, the last one in tends to be the first one out without any benefit of a severance package.

The process is amusing honestly. It is a head turner for me, that allure that someone else may be interested in you. New conversations while you are low key emotional cheating on the 9-5 that is paying your bills. Hushed conversations and secrets you can’t tell others (at work) while scrambling to find times to meet up with this new someone or someones who say nice things and whisper higher financial packages in your ear.

But that’s what you get when you play with fire.

If anything it has given me a new appreciation of where I am, but I have some work to do to get all the way caught up for what I should have been doing. I was asked to learn systems, agreed to do those things and then promptly feel down a rabbit hole of self reflection, interviewing and some healthy waffling. I’ve already been working this weekend to get caught up on the systems I should have been learning this entire time, so I can speak with authority on what I promised I would be able to.

I’m going to have to schedule some more time for vacation because this wild month has stretched all of my nerves and this adorable menace continues to find ways to dance on them. Not that travelling with be on the agenda this year. I’m working as hard as I can to shovel as much money as I can back into the house as quickly as I can. Shoring up the foundation, finishing up the tuckpointing will be later in the fall and I have the window people coming back out to measure for a couple of the windows. I have to get the window in the stairwell done as the frame is rotted out and I cannot have the heat/cold working its way into more places in the house.

RIP my paychecks.

Perhaps I can spend the rest of the time this weekend shaking off the experience in the garden, pulling vines, planting the sweet potatoes and finding some more spots for the Salvia I got.