Eight days in, still alive
Tomorrow is the end of my second week at work at my new job, and today was the first day that I was able to leave without a huge knot in my stomach. Things are not quite coming together yet, because there is still a huge amount for me to learn, explore, and get a handle on, but I had a couple of small successes today, and some kind words from an old boss of mine. Combined with some attaboys I got yesterday from my new boss, I feel that I have made a good start. I'm not sure if I would feel as good if I hadn't have gone through the fear and anxiety, though. I don't think it would feel so good to get a little bit accomplished. If the updated website files go up tomorrow without a hitch and the final version of my press release is approved, I think I will have a really, really happy Fourth. And I'll be able to play around with my sister, brother-in-law and nephews without feeling like I should be home cramming for my new job, as if it were an exam. It is, in a way; but it will wait until Monday. Hooray for little victories.
Never underestimate the power of fear . . .
. . . as a motivational force. I started my new job Monday, and there is a great deal that is terrifying in some respect. I suppose a more mature woman would never admit to being scared out of her mind, but here I am, confessing it. The fear is making me scream in the night, and pulling my stomach into knots, but it is in the same measure exhilarating. The potential for failure is very large. The person who did this job for me was not effective, costs need to be cut, and the budget is at least ten times more than anything I've ever managed before. I'd cry in panic, if I wasn't so busy putting on a confident face and trying to make new friends when everything in my nature wants me to crawl into the very same hole I've been trying to get out of for over a year and a half.
You can run, but you can't ever hide. Today when I got home and was in the middle of my upper body workout I just started crying for no reason. Remember Holly Hunter in Broadcast News? Me! I shouldn't be so hard on myself. The enormity of what I'm doing and the large leap I really need to make, to get where I want to be in my career, seemed suddenly vaster than an ocean. I know I have come very, very far. But it doesn't seem far enough.
The true meaning of ambivalence
It's easy to get on bandwagons, hoist flags and stand on one side or another. When we moved into Iraq militarily, although I was uneasy, I knew that there were horrors going on in Iraq that our country was responsible for. Our policy of containment, of propping up tiny little fascists to gain footholds in Communist countries and so defeat what we saw as tyranny, led us to support the regime of a man who used torture on a regular basis to insure compliance. He was part of a religious minority in a dangerous and defiant country, and to make matters worse, we had walked away from Iraq when we were probably hours away from getting rid of him forever. In the intervening 12 years, Saddam's regime practiced unspeakably evil acts on a daily basis as a matter of state governance. People were dying in mass numbers, and we were responsible for that.
Since the capture of Saddam and the supposed liberation of Iraq, the tone of the country has turned, and now a nation that was virulently pro-war has become ashamed of itself, and the finger-pointing has begun. This is just and right in an open-air democracy. We should question our leaders and their decisions, especially when it appears a matter of our state governance to ignore the very international laws with which we hold other nation's feet to the fire. The Geneva Convention is not a nice document in a frame. We're responsible for breaking it, just as much as Saddam was. But that doesn't make our going in there 100% wrong, either. We entered into a no-win situation, and it's a quagmire we are going to be in for a long time. Much of it is deserved, because we helped sling the mud. But it should never be forgotten that there were worse abuses. I'm still on the fence about the whole thing, but we can't leave there yet, and we had to go. My father once told me that being a soldier meant "doing the hard thing because we must." We're just not alone in the world.
NACA
Today Richard and I met with a counselor from NACA (the Neighborhood Assistance Coalition of America) to begin counseling to make us homeowners. NACA is a not-for-profit organization that works against predatory lenders and for low- to mid-income people who wish to become homeowners but don't have the creditworthiness or the savings to get a fair mortgage rate. NACA's mission is to make you financially viable to qualify for their low-interest, no-down-payment, no-closing-costs mortgage. We went to a home buying workshop in February, which was our first step, and now we are working on becoming qualified. You can find out more about NACA's qualification process at their website.
We discovered today that we are in much better shape than we thought we were, considering we don't have any savings right now and are planning to get married in August. Our counselor told us that if we stay through the process and take all the steps we need to take to clean up our credit and save our earnest money and mortgage-payment cushion, we should be able to go house-shopping at the tail end of 2005. We were thinking it would take us twice that long.
The way NACA works, anyone who meets their income limits (in Raleigh, for two people it's $47,000) can get a house anywhere in the service area; for people with higher incomes (which is us), NACA will assist them to buy a house in a lower income neighborhood, to provide stabilization for those neighborhoods. We are unsure at this point whether those neighborhoods will work for us since we now both work in Research Triangle Park; at any rate, however, we feel this program will help us meet the goal of becoming better qualified to buy a house regardless. Considering that the entire interior beltline is in this area, I am holding out hope (which may be somewhat foolish, but I can dream, can't I?) that we will be able to find the house where we want in the neighborhood we want.
As part of our qualification, we've got the next three months to send out dispute letters for some items on our report. In September we will begin the earnest process of saving the money we need to take the next step. Stay tuned!
No more classifieds
This morning I picked the Sunday paper up from the front door as usual, and began to separate it, automatically looking for the classified ads. I had the section open, pen at the ready, before it occurred to me that I don't have to search those ads anymore, because I have a job now. I've been looking for a new job for so long, scanning those little boxes for some hope, it's almost hard to let go of the job search. To actually concentrate now on my new position.
That shouldn't be a problem, however; I've already been dreaming (having nightmares, more like) about my new job as well as thinking about it non-stop since I said yes. It is very frightening, to not see the road ahead. But mostly, I'm exhilirated. I'll be doing search engine optimization and advertising as part of my new duties; SEO is something I've been really wanting to do more of after my exposure at my last job, and advertising is a whole new ballpark. Not to mention that I'm going to be doing direct-to-consumer marketing, which I've never done before, and learning an entirely new business. In every life, the chance for something new: "it's a new day, it's a new dawn, and I'm feeling good."
Transitions
I'm in the process of moving my blog back here at my RoadRunner home page, and changing the poems page. This design was created by Janelle at Karysima (please see credits below), and I just loved it. I've learned that when it comes to page design, I'm a great content writer, so I started digging up some sites with linkware templates. I can hard code my entries, and just groove on the great design someone else with more patience than me created. Plus I'll save a few bucks a month. Inknoise was a bit of a disappointment, and the other hosted blogging sites seemed more of a waste of money when I've got the home page space here at my ISP. Anyway, I'll be moving over my archives soon enough, and will get back to emailing notifications once everything is up and running smoothly.
