Shaeon Restores Balance to the Force

[shaeon]

Found this article today. Very good points made. I've decided to take this into consideration when setting up the current challenge.

[SevenofSeven]

I enjoyed the article.

 

Where are you Challenging this time around?

[shaeon]

Druids. Since my main quest is now balance, that appears to be where I belong. Also, after seeing a holistic nutritionist, my methods are pretty much in line with the Druids as well. 

What about you? 

[shaeon]

Oh man. This week has been killing me. Training on a new product at work, and the training has just involved handling tons of bugs. Repetitive, mind numbing work. I can get a lot done once I get into the flow of it, but I'm having to work hard to get into that flow. Just completely boring work. Fortunately, it also doesn't require a whole lot of thinking (I guess? Is that fortunate, really??), so today when I felt like I couldn't hold it together for much longer, I just streamed YouTube videos in my laptop monitor while working in the main monitor. Do whatever it takes, I guess. 

 

So yeah. 

 

There are benefits to learning something new, like that changing things up does make things different, at the very lease. I don't get to get comfortable and lazy. But good god, this has been mind-numbing. 

 

Meanwhile, a friend of mine is kind of where I was in March when I suddenly realized that I need to get out. She's not in trouble like I was, but she's in a situation where she's so done with her job that she's genuinely concerned about getting fired. So she's talking a lot about how she can't stand it anymore, which of course I totally understand. I know what it's like to be at the can't take it anymore point and beyond that, but I'm not really sure what I can tell her other than "just keep applying." 

 

Tomorrow is my nerve conduction study at the hospital. If you generally follow my challenges and my updates and forgot that this was a thing, that's because it's been scheduled for more than a month. This is a follow up on that thing with my leg that hasn't even been a problem for a month now. But I figure it's worth it to go forward with the study, and so does my doctor. Hooray.

[shaeon]

My nerve conduction study went well. My nerves are fine. My doctor seems to fully agree with me that this problem really was just a medication side effect. So hopefully that's it for tests for a while. 

 

I also got contacted by one of the jobs that I applied for early on in my job search, in Atlanta. It seems that in general, some of the earlier applications I submitted are now getting follow up. 

 

This one has been pretty weird, though. First of all, he asked if I realized the job was in Atlanta, and if that meant I wanted to relocate. I could see asking that in a phone interview, but it seemed like an odd question when emailing me. I was a little surprised because he also requested a sample of my writing. In my experience so far, that's a bit unusual for tech writing. For one thing, often your writing is secure and cannot be publicly shared (this is definitely the case with mine, since I work for a banking software company). But also, simply being able to write is only one part of tech writing. The focus I've tended to see in interviews is on familiarity with the tools of the trade, sometimes specific writing style guides, types of development that you're familiar with, etc. So that seemed odd, particularly considering how many years of experience I have.

 

Then he asked if I could come to Atlanta for an interview. 

 

I feel like that's a lot to ask for a first interview. Here in my own city, first interviews are almost always by phone. Interviewing in person in Atlanta would require me to take an entire day off of work, and of course there's the cost of travel as well. If it were for a second interview, especially at a job where I knew the salary was desirable, I would gladly do it. But at this point, I started to get a nagging feeling that this guy just wants me to prove I really want this job by jumping through a lot of hoops. And frankly, I don't feel like that's a great way to start a business relationship. I looked up the company on glassdoor.com to see if there were any reviews of it. It doesn't even show up on that site, which also makes me feel funny about it. 

 

So I've decided to politely decline and move on. Early on in my job search, I was desperate and I would apply for pretty much anything. Now, I don't feel that way. I feel like it's important that I switch to a good job. If I end up moving to Atlanta, I feel like I should take a pay increase as well (after all, Atlanta has a higher cost of living and also far more opportunities). 

 

Meanwhile, I feel like what I'm learning from this is that I actually need to make my job search more slow and targeted. I need to seek out good places that I want to work. I also want to learn to write a query letter and start pitching articles to magazines that are within my interest. 

 

So the job search is still going. Just changing.

[RES]

[RogueLibrarian]

Found you! Hey, I'm glad the job search is still producing leads.