Wednesday, August 17, 2005

'Cause I'm Movin' On Up, to...Elkridge?

I've decided to take the job my friend offered me, which means I am officially forsaking the cloacal commute to and from the ironically monikered (ironikered?) City of Trees. Now that I've informed all of my co-workers and am beginning the tedium of tying up loose ends, I'm really, really excited about this new job.

First off, it will be unassailably cool to work for a toy company, regardless of my job function. I could be schlepping water to the company dog's bowl, and it'd still be a breath of fresh air. As much as I love my co-workers and the mission of my current employer, the monotony of this job can make me feel like this sometimes.

Second, I'll get to travel. By nature I'm a homebody, but right now I'm digging the idea of spending a week(end) here and there in New York, Boston, San Diego, or maybe even (fingers crossed) London. The only downside is that the boy and Hubby won't get to be there with me, but I'd be working anyway.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, my new office will be 15 minutes away from where I live. Right now, I can't even comprehend how this will improve my outlook on life. On a typical day, I leave my house at 7:10 a.m., drop off the boy, and hit the road to go to work by 7:25 a.m. I get to the office anywhere between 8:25 and 9:00 a.m. (post Labor Day, I sometimes don't cross the threshold 'til 9:30 a.m. courtesy of the school year kick-off). Going home, I shut down my computer at 5:30 p.m., and am home-again home-again jiggity-jog around 6:45 p.m. On a good day, that's 2 hours on the road. On a realistic day, it's more like 2.5.

This means that I stand to reclaim 10 HOURS PER WEEK. That's like a whole 'nother day! I could, oh, I don't know, play with the boy, or run an errand, or clean a bathroom without feeling like it's cutting into whatever teeny bits of me-time I have on any given week day. Best of all, I won't be freakin' exhausted when I'm home. Right now, "playing" with the boy entails "pretending" to be asleep so that he can dash over and wake me up. I'm convinced his early mommy memories will consist entirely of me laying on the floor as though I've just stroked out.

Despite the reasons listed above, this was actually a really tough decision to make 'cause there is a degree of risk involved. When I left my old job, my first job out of college, I ran screaming from it Edvard Munch-style. They'd given me nutty amounts of work to do, and occasionally weren't able to pay me for my efforts. Well, and the dude running the company made David Brent look like Mother Teresa.

Suffice it to say I couldn't possibly regret leaving them 'cause they had zilch to offer me. But my current employer does -- security, guaranteed increases, appreciative co-workers, educational opportunities. So I'm gonna feel like a right fool if the new job is not all it's currently cracked up to be. Ah, but my friend wouldn't have sucked me into Dilbert-esque bedlam, right? Right?

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