I wanted to go with an easier one this week – one that everyone could answer. This also satisfies the nostalgic theme of these past few days for me. Last May was a busy time for me.
“What you were doing this time last year.”
If you want to get technical, one year ago today, I was in Disney with my family on the Glatfelter side. Oh my God, it was SO MUCH FUN. Seriously. I had the BEST time at Disney with Jay, Jack, Cyndi, Heather, Steven, Kayla, and Kelly. It was spectacular. I hope we can do another big family vacay again someday. 🙂
Unknowing to me, a chain of events was set into motion while I was at Walt Disney World. Something happened at my former job that I found out about when I returned from Disney. The day this all went down, Thursday, May 24, I got an e-mail from the paralegal program at Meredith College. The program sends out e-mails with job postings to current and former paralegal students. Last year at this time, I had graduated from Meredith just days before we left for Disney. During my first semester, I had applied for these jobs, but stopped doing it regularly in December 2011 after getting discouraged over never hearing back from anyone. I, of course, wanted to change careers but since up until this moment, I had had a good thing going at my old job, I was in no rush. My goal was to find a new job within a year of graduation. On this particular day, I was feeling so betrayed by my “immediate supervisor,” that I decided to apply for the next job that came my way. So I did. That was also the day that I decided that I was going to call out sick and plan a 48 hour NY adventure to accompany Jay and Jack to Blogworld in NYC (they were on a panel on June 5, if I remember correctly). Bam. Little old indecisive, scope-out-the-situation, consider-the-options, think-everything-through-too-much-ahead-of-time me sat down at my desk and applied for a new job, bought plane tickets, and made a plan to call out sick from work as I secretly traveled to my homeland for a podcasting thing.
Of course, I then forgot all about it. The job, that is. I obviously didn’t forget about Blogworld. On Saturday, June 2, I had dinner with one of my former classmates. We had a conversation that went like this:
“I work right near here,” she said. “I’m by the Bar Center. You know, that job posting they sent out last week?”
“Oh yeah,” I replied. “I applied for that job, but I doubt I’ll hear anything from them.”
“You never know,” was her optimistic answer. End of conversation.
Cut to Monday, June 4. Jay and I were at our Southwest gate at RDU, waiting to board. I checked my phone and noticed I had an e-mail: “Hi Colleen. Thank you for your application and interest in…” Holy crap! I damn near stopped breathing out of shock. The e-mail came in at 4:13 p.m. and our flight was at 4:45 p.m. Freaking out, I showed the e-mail to Jay, who urged me to respond immediately, especially because he knew how much the incident from the previous week had upset me. I decided to wait until after the flight so I could calm down and think of a proper response. After all, not only was this a chance for a job interview, but it was the first response I had ever gotten back from a paralegal-related job. I say a lot of stupid shit when I have no backspace or sensor button. I wasn’t going to mess this up by not thinking out the perfect response.
Well, I did respond to that e-mail. I went on that job interview and the rest is history.
I said earlier that this time last year was busy for me: In between graduating from Meredith and going to Walt Disney World, John & I recorded our “comeback” episode of MetroBuzz. On May 22, my grandfather underwent surgery for cancer. May 24 is the day I described above. I went back to New York City and stayed at Memorial Sloan Kettering May 26-28 to be with Grandpa & the rest of my family. Returned to New York for Blogworld a week later. Blogworld rocked. That was a really fun trip that I am so happy and grateful that we got to take. Since I wasn’t able to post any pictures from it last year, let me share one now:
Oh, the difference a year makes. I am happy at my new job, but Grandpa’s still sick. I guess you really do take the good and take the bad…
