Two weeks ago I wasn’t doing well.
I was unemployed, broke, and completely at a loss of what to do next. My confidence was dismal from all the job rejections and my roommate had just gotten a dog even though she knew I was allergic. I had the flu, my lowest bank account balance ever and one of my closest in person friends had just gotten a new job in Denver and made the move.
I was happy that two of my high school friends had just gotten engaged to their significant others but that also reminded me how fast the world was moving on without me and I dealt with it by getting accidentally wasted on a Tuesday night out at the bars. I had a great time flirting with a hot skier, we sang karaoke and I bought a round of tequila shots for strangers when I lost life size Jenga, until I found myself puking in the bathroom and waking up the most hungover I’ve EVER been. I couldn’t move all day. To make matters even worse, exactly a year earlier I had brought all of this upon myself by quitting my cushy job at an engineering company in order to travel Europe for 5 months, choosing to pause my real life in order to hopefully reroute it in a better direction.
I don’t regret leaving my job and traveling, or even working a simple summer job in my hometown once I got back, but the goal of my trip was to figure out what to do next, and for the life of me I couldn’t. In the months following what was definitely a high point of my life I now found myself entirely directionless and lost. Nothing made sense and nothing felt right.
So two weeks ago, in the midst of what I can easily say was the lowest point of my life, I woke up to a text from a family friend I’d been networking with. I was in a fever induced flu haze so I almost just went back to sleep, but as I read that he wanted me to come meet him and his new business partner for coffee I knew I had to go or I’d regret it.
I willed myself out of bed and into the shower, telling myself I just had to say hello and then I could go back and sleep the rest of the day. This proved to be mostly true, except a few minutes after I arrived they told me I had a job if I wanted it and that while they could only pay me $1,600 per month since they were a startup, I’d be getting in on the ground floor of a really exciting company, one that they expect to grow quickly.
As I went home to sleep and think about the offer I was reluctant to really believe things would work out. Maybe I heard them wrong or they’d realize I wasn’t the right fit, or maybe I wouldn’t like the work or decide I need a job with a better salary. But now that I’ve worked full time for them the past two weeks, it’s only today that I wake up and feel confident saying I am officially employed again and realize how completely relieved I am that this opportunity came along.
It’s a ton of work already, I’ve worked easily 50 hours this week alone and I’m on-call at all hours of the day for the CEO to ask for help. My official title is Executive Assistant but he’s introduced me as a Project Manager and an Operations Manager already. I’m one of three full time employees in addition to 15 other part time people and we’ve been working out of coffee shops and from home since we don’t yet have an office. So far I’ve edited proposal documents, set up a file system to organize the files for the entire company, taken meeting notes, pretended to be a college newspaper reporter to get information on a potential new client, recommended three software programs, built a few page templates, gone over my monthly phone minutes, decided to fix website bugs, and booked plane tickets to an upcoming conference in Chicago that I have to go to in April.
I just found out I am going to Las Vegas in two weeks to be the contact point between a new client and our company and later today I’m doing site testing on a new version of our website. I finished my taxes yesterday to find I get a $600 refund and I won a raffle prize on Friday for a dog walking adventure that I’m genuinely excited to bring my roommate’s dog on. It’s ridiculous to think about how different my life looked two weeks ago.
I know everything still isn’t ideal. I’m still broke, now overworked, and living with a dog I’m allergic to, but I also have a job that I’m excited about and friends that are always there to listen to me rant. And though much of my life I still have no idea about, for the first time in a while I can picture what my future could be. And that alone makes everything else worth it.
And hey, if I hate it I can always quit to travel again, right?
Brilliant blog, I think we all live in fear of what is going to happen next. Are we going to get that job and will taking that opportunity ruin my life? I’m glad your going for it.
Sorry for the delay in response, new jobs eat up your time! Thanks for the kind words and the reassurance that taking a bit of a chance is the only way to move forward.
Yay! I love that your new job is letting you do a bit of everything, because you are the kind of person who has a lot of random skills and/or can acquire them easily if given a reason. Some jobs are so narrow that I have to think it actually ties you down more than opening doors. Like, if you work for 10 years as a teacher or a receptionist or whatever, you may be great at that but that is the ONLY kind of position you’re qualified for. But what you have is the opportunity to define your job however you need to in a given situation, and who knows what kinds of great skills and experiences you’ll rack up!
Thanks Cindy. I completely agree that too many jobs tied you down instead of opening doors. I was starting to feel like my resume had too many ‘kid-based activities’ and people would think of me as a science teacher or basketball coach or summer camp worker. I learned a ton of valuable life skills at all those jobs but because they involve kids people see them as specific. I’m grateful for this job because I really will learn so many things, not only in a field i know nothing about, healthcare, but also in business and investment and sales and administration and HR and design.