New Job Update

Apparently good stuff falls into your lap about the exact second you're ready to give up on the idea that anything good can happen anymore. And I was leaning over that line. I told myself that my work in grad school had been pointless (though not meaningless, because it was where I met all of you, and for that I would always be glad to have entered that program at that moment).

Somehow I neglected to mention just where I was working. At one of the publishing companies in town, I am now an associate editor. I love that. Associate. Definitely not assistant. I'm working on 8 books at the moment. In a few months, when you type my name into the Library of Congress, you will find things I have done. Things I have line edited, picked photos for, researched facts on. They will be mine.

But one job offer isn't enough for me to wonder why the gods of fate suddenly realized I was still around. Nope. A week after the editing job, a tech school in the cities called. I interviewed for an adjunct position and was offered 3 classes an hour later. An hour! Then MSU called. Now I'm worried my car will blow up or one of the dogs will get some horrible, inoperable disease--something to balance all the sudden greatness. In the end I turned down the tech school. Great as it was, I would have exhausted myself. I also turned down my spot in the counseling and student personnel program. That was a tough one, seeing as I had already convinced myself of my new path, a path far from anything English.

So somebody heard my plea, because I got a job. A job in my field, nonetheless. Of course, I haven't been sitting on my behind all spring either. I did, technically, have a job. That is, if you count sweeping floors and taking old ladies' money for overpriced greenhouse goods a job. But this new one, this job that I start next week, offers me benefits and a cubicle. That's right, I will for the first time in my life have my own health insurance. I'll no longer be under my parents or the boy or anyone else. I can pick my own plan, my own dentist, my own everything. They will offer me paid holidays and sick leave. I won't be required to stand for 8 hours in a row in a place that's 85 degrees because the owner refuses to turn the air on, even when customers come to the counter sweaty and complaining. I won't have to use a bathroom that relies on the leftover rolls of TP taken from the customers' bathroom. The same bathroom that has a pile of comics sitting next to the toilet. I mean, that's fine if you want to poop on company time (which never happened here because you had to clock out for every single break. Let me know if you think that's lawful...), but reading comics in there? Really? The bathroom was in the breakroom. You could be eating a sandwich and hear people in the bathroom. Anyway, I digress.

This really couldn't have come at a better time. I had already decided if I didn't get this job I would forget about all things English. I would go back to school for CSP (I was accepted into their fall program) and never write another word or talk about the time that was my MA program.