Continuing Journey

Those of you who know me well know I have moved A LOT. (Arizona, Ohio, Florida, Michigan, Washington, Oregon - with several shifts between various towns...over 25 moves since leaving my parents' home.)

When my job at the non profit ended last July I began looking for a position in or near Boise. I was utterly CONVINCED that was where I would land next, hopefully for keeps.

There were a number of reason I picked Boise. (close to family, nice climate, affordable housing, LDS temple there, right size town...not too big, not too small, but in the words of baby bear in the Goldilocks story, it's "just right".)

However, after MANY applications and six interviews in Idaho, no job floated to the top. I went through every phase of anticipation, excitement, disappointment, worry, crankiness, discouragement and fear you can imagine.

My husband in nearing retirement. I will be primary wage earner for the next 15 yrs. So it is critical that I find a place where I can get a job with decent benefits where we will be comfortable living long term.

So I began widening my net...applied for jobs in lots of different places doing lots of different things: Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Washington, Oregon and Alaska.

And wouldn't ya know, it seems I may have found a hit... in Alaska.

I am working really hard at not getting over confidant. I've had too many near misses over the past few months to dare get cocky again. But this one feels different. This one somehow just seems to be a fit. I passed the phone interview and am now scheduled to fly up for a face-to-face. They will start checking my references this week and I will do a 30 minute presentation to show my stuff...We'll see how it lands....

But through it all I have had such an interesting roller coaster ride of perceptions about what work means. What work do I consider beneath me? What work do I consider out of my league? Why? How come not having a job to go to felt so excruciatingly crummy some days and appeared as sweet respite on others?

In my head I completely understand that my value as a person is NOT defined or limited by what I do to earn a paycheck. Yet in my gut I still tie a lot of my identity to my job.

I've thought a lot about good jobs I've had and horrid jobs I've had and tried my very best to sort out what I need from a work environment to make it be a better match.

What do you like about your job? What do you hate?
If you could do ANYTHING you wanted (and no matter what it was you would get paid EXACTLY twice what you now earn) what would you do?

Work is indeed an intriguing part of our lives. I've had several starts and stops with trying to do some serious academic research about American perceptions of the workplace. Lately, however, I've been too busy dancing in circles with my own attitudes about it all to make much sense of bibliography and footnotes.

Will I get this next job I interview for? I honestly don't know.
But I feel ready for it. I think it would be a good fit.
Only time will tell.