It’s worth a nickel

i promised updates; here i’ll deliver.

my uncle is being moved to umdnj today to prepare for surgery tomorrow. the biopsy results indicate a stage 1 malignancy, which i’m lead to believe is just a coldly clinical way to say cancer without saying cancer. surgery + chemo + radiation is the anticipated strategy, and assuming the surgery confirms the current belief (that the cancer is contained to the one tumor, and hasn’t metastasized), the prognosis is good. please keep my family in your thoughts.

no word on the job yet, but i have two other interviews this week: today and friday. i’m hopeful that by friday i’ll have an offer on the table from the awesome job i talked about last week, and so will be able to cancel the interview.

i’ve been giving a lot of thought to my career lately. anybody who ever reads my crazy blog entries knows that i’m more likely to write about what’s going on at work than about any other thing, really.

i’m in a holding pattern. i want out of my current job, but my management has declared me a “critical resource.” that basically allows them to keep me in my job longer than they would be able to do otherwise. my current availability date (the date my management has agreed they will let me go to a new job) is 15th june … not so far away, really. (103 days, but who’s counting?)

and i’m interviewing, of course. i haven’t decided it’s time to leave the company just yet, although i don’t fault those who’ve decided it’s the best course of action. over the past nine months i’ve had close to a dozen interviews, and i’m still waiting for something to materialize.

in the meantime, how the #$&* am i supposed to stay motivated?

i’m rekindling an old dream. for years, i’ve been saying i want to go to law school before i die … and now i’m taking the steps to ready me to do it. i’ve read and downloaded a lot of material on going to law school, and i’m starting to prepare to sit for the lsat (law school admissions test) this fall. so far i’m doing well on the practice questions, though i haven’t managed to do an entire practice exam, timed, yet.

i’ve always said “it’s not worth it” or made some other lame excuse. suddenly, a daily train ride to and from manhattan doesn’t sound so bad, if it means i’m actually going to be doing something that is meaningful. yeah, i’m still anxious about the prospect of quitting my job to do it. i’m nervous about what it means for paul and me, and how our lifestyle may have to change from the comfortable one we’ve established. but at the end of the day, i think it might be the stimulus i need to make me a happier, more complete person.

this morning i had a quick chat with a very nice woman who is trying to fill a job. the job sounded really cool, although it would be an incredibly difficult step up for me in terms of complexity, scope, etc.

so i didn’t get it.

i’m frustrated, but only because i haven’t found the right one yet. i’ve now been turned down for three jobs i would have liked, and i was offered one i didn’t want. somehow this trend is not promising.

i promised myself by 1q2006 … and that’s not here yet. so i’ve got to keep looking!

so i had a job interview on friday for a job that would have been really interesting. it would have been a great growth opportunity for me, which i’m a bit starved for at the moment. unfortunately, i didn’t get the job. but that’s not so bad, because i did get great feedback: i interviewed well and i was the 2nd ranked candidate for the job. i’m calling that a success and moving forward looking at other opportunities. (in fact, i got a call from someone on another opportunity this morning… we’re playing phone tag at the moment.)

on the flip side, i’m feeling a bit frustrated. i’ve been going to the gym religiously (hey, my body is a temple … worship it!) for about 4 months now, and the results are not coming quickly enough for me. (this is where the peanut butter comes in.) after consulting various trusted sources (thanks big, little sister, etc., etc.) i’m adding some more protein and trying to fit in a third lifting day into my routine. so welcome to friday, the sixth day of my gym week, and welcome to peanut butter, which is now being consumed by the tablespoon with breakfast each morning. yummy!