Dodging Traffic

Do you ever feel like you’re ducking lightening bolts, hopping from one scorched spot of earth to another just ahead of the next blast? Like maybe some lesser god has it out for you in some idle, lackadaisical kind of way?

Perhaps I’m being melodramatic. Maybe it’s more like a cosmic game of frogger and I’m the one in the webbed feet dodging traffic.

It’s not just me. It’s going around. I have at least three other close friends who were hit with major career decisions in the last week. Moments of truth. Two-roads-diverged-in-a-yellow-wood kind of deals.

I’m hopping roads myself.

I got a call a week ago, took an interview on Wednesday, and Thursday afternoon I had a job offer. A concurrent string of unfortunate events at my then-present place of employment took me from “hmm” to “well, maybe” to “please, god, yes” in about 48 hours. It’s easy to tell which way the wind is blowing when the walls are falling down, you know?

So this morning I walked through one door with a resignation letter and this afternoon I walked through another with my signature on an offer sheet. Bam. Here we go. Feeling the same way all over again, as the lady says.

It was a strange experience packing up my pencil cup, my pictures, and my Dr. Horrible calendar into a cardboard box again. They were just in this box. I bid my co-workers farewell and handed in my keys. For the first time in my life, I didn’t give two weeks notice.

This has all happened so fast it’s blurry.

So I walked into a new building this afternoon. This is the biggest office I’ve ever worked in. I think I can find the kitchen and the bathroom again, but I was introduced to thirty people whose names I most certainly will not remember.

This shift – this new road – it’s not ideal in a couple of big ways. Among other things, I have the word “technician” at the end of my job title and I’m trying not let my ego see the business card. But there are a lot of pluses to this road. It looks like it’s built out of good solid material. I’m feeling like maybe I’m not about to fall into a pothole or get squished by a semi, and that’s a marked improvement. There’s nothing for it except to charge forth and show the new PTB exactly how awesome I am. I’m the chick with the shovel, right?

So my pencil cup and I are going to go in there tomorrow. I’m going to find a nice permanent-looking spot to set it down and get to work. No webbed feet on me.