Dating: Professional-Style

No, I'm not becoming a professional dater! But, having been on several interviews recently, I can't help but notice how interviewing for a job feels remarkably like being on a date! I'm letting the employer know what I bring to the table, they're informing me of what they are offering and then we're seeing if it's a good fit. I show up, looking neatly pressed and presentable, they show me around the facility, we make small talk...

And since I haven't actually nailed down a job, there's dealing with rejection. I've usually coped fairly well with that in the dating world, so it's been interesting to see how I feel about it in a job interview situation. Mainly, I've been a bit more sensitive to rejection in a job interview. However, in general, I'm probably a little less sensitive to rejection than your normal applicant. I can only assume it comes from dealing with dating the last four years!

I think it's because I feel like dating is more of an organic thing... either we're going to match up or we won't. I don't think it's necessarily something that can be controlled, but I feel like an interview, I should have a bit more control. I'm smart and good at what I do, so why wouldn't they want me?

I recently applied for a sales position and during the interview, they asked if I would be able to cope with people rejecting me on the phone and I said, "Well, luckily, I've been dating for the last few years, so I've learned not to take it personally!" I think that's what I need to remind myself of in the job hunting realm. I shouldn't take it personally.

In some cases, I think I haven't had the exact experience in the field they were looking for or enough education/certifications or maybe I did, but I was too expensive. Or maybe I was geographically undesirable! Any way you look at it, it wasn't a good fit. And almost exactly like dating, it doesn't really matter why it wasn't a good fit, all that's important is that it wasn't and it's time to move along.

I guess the bottom line is that I need to be patient, because the right position will come along and we'll both know it when it happens! Finally! Dating experience helps in other areas of my life! I am hopeful about the sales position I interviewed for a couple weeks ago. I should be hearing back from them this week. I'm hopeful because like any good date, the chemistry was there right away, conversation flowed smoothly, it felt like a good fit. However, I've already mentally prepped myself for the possibility that maybe they didn't feel it, and if so, I guess it's back to the drawing board!

Out with the Old...

Man, it's been a LONG time since I've posted anything on my blog. You'd think with not having a job, I'd have soooo much more free time to post something!  And you'd be wrong!  :-)

I suppose with even less structure than I had before, I've managed to just do whatever I've wanted over the last six months.  Yes, it's been six months since I lost my job.  The biggest news, besides the non-news that I don't actually *have* a job yet, is that I broke up with the ex-on-again-off-again boyfriend in June.  And this time, it was for good.  And I thank God every day for that.  That is certainly the best decision I've made this year!

Here's what I learned from that relationship:

• If I can't trust the guy, I need to just break up with him right away because always wondering when/if he's cheating is horribly taxing and SO not worth it.
• Just because someone pays attention to you doesn't mean they love you.
• Lip service is useless. I need someone who will follow through on what he says.
• A man who can't manage his money is not a good match for me.
• Chattanooga actually has some decent places to eat.
• Dogs aren't all bad.  

I'm sure I learned other things, but those were the biggies.  And I think what was awesome about the whole situation (although it hurt and sucked at the time) was that I felt like everything in my life started taking a turn for the better after I broke up with him.  

First, I came home to LA and went directly to church. I had been praying for a sign about what to do about him and the relationship and if I should move or not and got a big, bright flashing one that screamed, "GET OUT!", for which he ridiculed me.  I thanked God for getting me out of that relationship and continue to do so.  I had actually considered moving to live near him and I'm so glad I didn't actually do it.  What a mistake that would've been... whew!

Second, little things happened like... I found the couch I've been wanting to buy for months from Ikea (but didn't because it was too expensive) on Craigslist for 1/3 the price!  And easily found people to help me move it.  

Third, but most importantly, I felt content to be alone.  It's possible that I may have felt flickers of this from time-to-time over the last 4 1/2 years, but mostly, I've always wanted to find someone.  This was the first time that I honestly and truly felt completely at peace with being alone.  As a woman all alone.  As a woman who maybe will never have children.  As a woman who may never find the "right" man.  And I felt completely okay with it because it was light years better than the relationship I had been in with him, especially over the last few months.  It's amazing how freeing that feeling was for me.  How calming and peaceful it was. 

So of course, while I'm feeling extremely thankful for being out of that terrible relationship, I meet the new guy.  I say "new guy," but truthfully I've known him for the last few years. He's recently become available and considering that I've admired him for the last couple years, I was pleasantly surprised (and more than a little thrilled!) to find out that he felt similarly and he asked me out.  I decided to name him in accordance with his Myers-Briggs personality type (ISTJ) because I suspect it will fuel a lot of my discussions with him... 

But in a nutshell, he's fabulous.  When I'd see him here or there, I would always think to myself that it was rather unfortunate that he was not available because I always suspected that we might be a good match and now, I actually get to test that theory out!  And you know who I have to thank for that?  God, for getting me out of the previous relationship and available for this new one. The timing could not have been better!  It's still pretty new, but so far, it's going well.  We had our first real fight on Monday and made it through without any hard feelings, so I would consider that a success!  We are able to discuss the tough subjects without much fuss and it seems like our biggest challenge so far is just in our communication styles, which doesn't surprise me.  We're still trying to figure each other out.  

Perhaps the most important thing to people who have been following my dating life?  He lives 15 minutes away from me!!  And he's a good, good man.  Completely trustworthy, which in turn makes him red-hot sexy to me!  He's fairly reserved, but I don't mind. He's the yin to my extroverted E!  And he's given me permission to post about him, so I suspect there will be more frequent blog posts in the future... 

To-Do List while Job-Free

So, I've been job-free for just a couple weeks now and I've been busy, busy, busy!  I went to Vegas for five days right after I got done training the new girl.  And boy, oh boy, I needed a drink after finishing up the training...  I don't think I've ever been to Vegas for more than a few days at a time to gamble and just hang out.  It was pretty fun.

After returning from Vegas, I went over to Chris' house a few times to help him start cleaning out his garage.  Other than that, I haven't really done a whole lot.  The last few days, I've been on jury duty and officially got put on a case yesterday.

So I've decided I need to make a "to-do list" of what I want to do while I'm not working.  Some of them are totally practical, some are completely pie-in-the-sky-weird and some are just miscellaneous notes to myself.  Either way, the to-do list, which I used all the time while working, is going to become essential to getting stuff done while I'm job-free.

• Read some books:  some poker books, Your Money or Your Life, Getting Things Done, the Four-Hour Workweek, Eat Pray Love, and more to add I'm sure...
• Watch some movies:  Catching up on my Netflix list would be awesome... but that's to fill in the cracks.
• Travel:  May - Kauai, June - Atlanta for Oasis of Fun, July - Williamsburg, VA for Gulf Games, August - NorCal for MeepleFest.  There's a decent chance I might take a road trip to the east coast for Oasis of Fun and just bum around over on that side of the country until Gulf Games about a month later.  That would be fun.  Just plain fun.
• Volunteer on a regular basis - I want to volunteer at least a couple times a month with local agencies.  Most likely, it will be Project Angel Food (prepping food to deliver to homebound clients) and AIDS Project LA (food bagging or office work).
• Get rid of stuff out of my apartment.
• Exercise.
• Eat through my pantry & freezer to save $$ on food.
• Figure out what I want to do for work - I could just get a job doing what I've been doing, but I've been contemplating what all my options are and I'm trying to figure out which direction I want to go.  Do I want to make more money with more stress and responsibilities?  Or settle for less money, but potentially much less stress?  I'm hoping that I can read some books and do some soul-searching to figure this out.
• Floss more regularly.  
• Learn some German.
• Learn Morse code (?) - this is inspired by that episode of the Amazing Race when the Asian couple got eliminated.  
• Sleep a normal amount - I've been sleeping SOOOOOO much the last couple weeks.  I need to stop oversleeping.  It makes me feel lazy and unproductive.  I also would like to keep a fairly "normal" schedule.  I tend to lean towards the night owl side of the spectrum, so it's tough.

I'm sure there will be more and I'll just have to add them as I think of them.  

Life Update

The major life update is that as of March 31st (happy birthday to me!!), I will be job-free. Not necessarily by choice, but there wasn't much I could do about it. I've been working remotely for almost the last two years for a company based out of Dallas. They hired a new president last year and she wants to have someone working out of the main office in Dallas and I did not want to move there. There were other factors involved with the decision, but that seemed to be the sticking point.

The whole process has been extremely stressful which is what led me to my latest bout of silence on the blog. This situation has made me realize that I tend to become rather hermit-y when things aren't going well. I guess I'm following that old saying, "If you don't have something nice to say, don't say it at all!" Meanwhile, my friends I see day-to-day have been getting an earful. And then another earful...

I think probably the worst part has been the uncertainty of everything for several weeks. There have been other sucky parts, but I'll keep that part to myself for now. I was so stressed about it that I eventually got SO sick!! I've never been so sick in my life. I laid in bed for five days straight. I only got out of bed because I had to do our monthly payroll. After which, I promptly climbed back in bed. Thank goodness for Edward, who insisted I go see the doctor. I had been assuming I had the flu and was afraid I had the dreaded swine flu! When I finally went to the doctor, she informed me that I had bronchitis. She then prescribed me two inhalers and some nasal spray and instructions on how long to use them. Now, two weeks later, I'm feeling much, much better.

So, that's the big update. And with the free time I'll have on my hands you may get posts a little more often about random stuff I'm doing around my apartment. Some stuff I'd like to get done while I'm not working:

• Eat through my pantry & freezer. This will give me the opportunity to try out different recipes and eat everything up!!
• De-clutter my apartment! Wow, I'm REALLY looking forward to this. I've already started taking boxes of stuff to give to the Goodwill.
  
• Stick to a budget. I've started making my budget. I'm not sure if I should post it on here because I'm not sure anyone would even care about the particulars. But, I was thinking about trying to make it like a game... LOL - as John put it, "a game with limited resources"!
• Exercise more. With no job, I should be able to exercise more, right?
• Floss more regularly. I just had my cleaning today and again I promised my hygienist Mary that I would be better about flossing. I need to start setting up better habits. Time to write it down, FLYlady-style...
• Take some trips. Already planning on going to Atlanta in June for Oasis and Williamsburg in July for Gulf Games. I am contemplating taking a road trip out there and just killing time for the month in between with friends along the East Coast. I just need to find someone to babysit my kitty for a month!
• Get caught up on my reading & Netflix queue. Not very "productive," but fun!
  
• Go to the beach. I'm gonna work on my tan some... and maybe get some reading done while I'm at it!
  

Anyway, you'll see random notes to myself too as I clear stuff out of the apartment. The blog is the perfect place to record stuff that I don't want to lose! And then you get to see it too! I'm mentioning this because I'm about to post a list of restaurants from a newspaper ad/article that I've had stuck to my fridge for a couple years. I'm ready to throw it out, but I want to make a list of the restaurants in case I ever want to know what was on there.

I have no idea how long it will take to find a new job, but I intend to make good use of my time off and enjoy it!

Club Grazie Benefits

I enrolled in the Club Grazie Players Club on New Year's Day (the day I met my new favorite poker player aka: the Venetian). After I enrolled, I was itching to play some black jack, but all the tables had a minimum bet of $25, which was a little too rich for my blood, so I played video black jack. It turns out that this is roughly the equivalent of playing slots! I put in $20 which lasted me quite a while and I kept recycling the money through. Finally, I busted out and proceeded to put another $60 in there, so I ended up losing $80.

Ever since this visit, I've been getting offer after offer from the Venetian/Palazzo for complimentary nights at the casino. The fine print says that I need to maintain my historical level of play. Out of curiosity, I checked to find out how much I had cycled through the machine in the 90 minutes I was playing... turns out it was quite a bit! $4,679!!

So, THAT'S why I've been receiving offer after offer... well, I called up to find out more about the program. Other interesting tidbits:

• If you're a poker player and you play 6 hours a day in the poker room, they will reduce the amount of your suite (as long as your price is $399 or less) to $119 on Sun - Thurs and $159 on Fri-Sat nights. So, you can book the fancy suites for $369/night, play your six hours in the poker room and then have the poker desk call to the front desk to have them adjust your room rate. Good to know!
• You earn food comps while you're playing. But they don't carry over! I had earned about $50 of food credit from my 90 minutes of video black jack and I had no idea!
• They won't charge you for your hotel room if you don't maintain your level of play. They just won't offer you any more free nights.
• To earn comps by playing slots, it's better to play longer with smaller bets than the way I did it, which was very concentrated playing.
• To get a comped night for playing table games, your average bet has to be about $200/bet.
• If you're staying there, open a credit line, charge everything to your room and then when you leave, check to see if you have any comps. If you do, have it applied to your bill.
• If you aren't staying there and play the slots, you can go to a credit desk to get the credits you've earned (like my $50!!) transferred to a restaurant so you can use it up before you go.

I'm ready for another Vegas trip! Who's with me?

Working on Resolutions for 2010

I love the beginning of a new year. Yes, it's still the Friday that follows a Thursday, but there's still something different about it. Mentally, it's a NEW year, which means I can slough off the old year and all the mistakes I made in 2009 and start fresh in 2010... a rebirth of sorts.

I've been contemplating what my resolutions will be for 2010 and have realized that all my resolutions fall into one of three (and usually ALL three) categories: money/finance, health/fitness and personal growth.

One thing that I completely let slide in 2009 that I think I'm going to pick back up for 2010 is logging all my game plays. It's not necessarily a "resolution," but I think it's something I'm going to re-start in 2010.

And looking back on 2009, I think the other non-resolution, but something I want to start back up is blogging! I've been lagging severely on that. I hardly posted anything in 2009. Mainly because I didn't want to blog about the guy I liked and that took up a lot of my mental energy. Now that that is over and done with, I feel the new year shining on my blogging soul!

At this point, I'm not going to go back and "catch up" on my old stuff, but just go forward from now.