Newsworthy

Something amazing has happened. It started happening a couple of weeks ago but it became official today. My position with my old company just became permanent – something I’ve been hoping for and (literally) dreaming about ever since I left the firm to go live overseas two and a half years ago.

Actually, I should say that this started happening months ago. My job hunt, in retrospect, went exactly how it needed to in order for this to come about. There were jobs I was certain I’d be offered that I never heard back on. There were jobs I turned down because I knew I didn’t have to settle for crappy pay and no benefits. There was an interview that I walked out on because I didn’t feel safe. There was this really weird experience with a recruiter who ended up actually being the company owner’s wife?? – I didn’t get that job; I’m sure it went to someone more ugly. And there was that one job that I worked for two days – two days that filled me with a disproportionate dread. Now, in hindsight, I know that no matter how much I’d hated that job, I could have never quit full-time work to accept a month-long temporary position with my old firm. THAT’S why I knew I’d made a mistake almost as soon as I accepted that job, even though I couldn’t properly explain it. THAT’S why three days of panic evaporated the moment I quit and walked out the door. THAT’S why I never heard back on those opportunities I had in the bag, and why I had such a strong feeling that there was something on the horizon – because there was. I now have a salary and benefits at a job that I adore, and I’m so happy and grateful about it I could just throw up.

The only downside of it all is that it came about in sort of a terrible way. I can’t sing and dance about this stroke of luck (at work, anyway) because it came at the expense of another person - someone well-liked who fell on hard times. I’m trying to find the balance between screaming the good news in the faces of my coworkers and feeling gutted about this other person. I’ve just started thinking about the two events – this person losing their job and me getting it - as mutually exclusive, and that seems to help even if it makes me an abominable human being.

So anyway, I’m working. I’m productive. I’m contributing to society. I wake up at 5:40 every day and I’m in bed by 10 every night, except for the frequent evenings that I pass out on the couch at 8:30 while Jon watches football. I’m a Sleeper. It’s what I do. Sleep is important to me, especially when I’m in a work routine, and styling my long hair just didn’t fit in to my early morning schedule so two weeks ago I enlisted Jon to help me lop it off. Six inches gone like THAT. The clumps of wet hair were making slapping noises as they hit the floor. I’ve been trimming my own hair exclusively for the past three years and it didn’t occur to me beforehand that my invented haircut might not work on a shorter style. It did not work on the shorter style. The good news, though, is that after my new hairstylist Jeff surveyed the damage he concluded that it actually didn’t look like I’d cut it myself, it just looked like I’d received a really bad haircut. So. There’s that. Anyway, all that to say that I’m so serious about my sleep I hacked my own hair off with a pair of dull scissors to shorten my morning routine by a few minutes.

In conclusion, when I texted a picture of my new shorter hair to my sister-in-law Lianna (freshly returned to the United States from the Caribbean), this happened: