By the time April rolled around, I was pretty worried about several things. My savings were depleting and I hadn’t found a new job. Mom was in a rehab center in North Carolina 4 hours away from me because of\u00a0her latest mini-stroke, and getting to see my girlfriend only every other weekend was becoming intolerable. In desperation, I answered an ad for a job that was… less than satisfactory, but it would pay a few bucks.<\/p>\n
I made it all the way to the interview before they told me it was an overnight shift, which I had specifically insisted against. I’d be a useless zombie to them on that schedule. So I stormed politely out, went back to my borrowed bedroom, and considered my options. And that’s when the idea struck me: I wanted a job in NC close to Mom and Maya anyway. Perhaps I’d get more attention from employers if I claimed on my resume to already be living there…<\/p>\n
A few quick changes to my online job seeking accounts, and I kid you not, I had an urgent interview within three days. Two years<\/strong> of searching, and a simple fib dropped a job in my lap in THREE DAYS.<\/p>\n So it’s two months later. I’ve got a solid job that pays decently\u00a0and has great benefits and perks, I have my own place in Raleigh with Maya, Mom’s doing okay with her cat, and they just delivered the first couch I’ve ever paid for all by myself. As I stood at the sink washing some dinner dishes, the whole thing seemed so unreal… but here I am.<\/p>\n I’m more stressed than I’ve been for a while, especially since I’m still doing the podcast, and in a fit of insanity accepted my first con staff position in around 20 years or so. And I miss my friends and chosen family in Hampton Roads. But there’s so much good stuff in my life, stuff I’ve been striving for for so long, that I think I’ll find the strength to handle it. I’m just still a bit bewildered by the speed of the whole thing.<\/p>\n Life-changing events don’t phone ahead, I guess.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By the time April rolled around, I was pretty worried about several things. My savings were depleting and I hadn’t found a new job. Mom was in a rehab center in North Carolina 4 hours away from me because of\u00a0her latest mini-stroke, and getting to see my girlfriend only every other weekend was becoming intolerable. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[58,55,131,66,103,33,13],"class_list":["post-1312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-discordia","tag-family","tag-maya","tag-mom","tag-moving","tag-philosophy","tag-work"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1xCb9-la","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1312"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1313,"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1312\/revisions\/1313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}