I’ve been feeling super tired lately. The last time I was this damn tired, I had a gas leak in the house. Haha, yeah, I suppose I should get PGE out here again just to double check for that, huh.

The more likely story though, is that I have been doing a lot. Stepping up at ProMatch has demanded a few extra hours per week. A friend of mine, who is a leadership trainer and coach, just launched a virtual “mastermind” class so I’m now reading John Maxwell’s book, Becoming a Person of Influence (and I’m a super slow reader) plus participating on weekly group calls. You know me, anytime I hear about some opportunity to learn about leadership and shit, I get sucked in. Never mind that I hate interactive, small group learning formats. The first class was Wednesday night, and there was the whole “go around and introduce yourself and tell why you are participating” exercise. I want to support my friend, but I have done similar setups before, and I dunno, it’s just not my thing. Can’t quite put a finger on it. I know I’m super candid and open about sharing personal junk in my blog, but there’s just something about the two-way exchange, talking about personal growth with strangers. Whatever. It’s only four sessions, so not a huge deal. But yeah, I’m up late tonight staying on top of the readings and such. I know, it’s the nerd inside me: I take my assignments seriously.

Oh, I forgot to mention that at ProMatch, I also joined a “Success Team,” which is essentially a group of six people who meet every week to check in on their job searches. Frankly, I’m pretty motivated and driven solo: I don’t really feel a need to have accountability partners, but the experts say there are a host of benefits to these groups. I’m hoping I’ll gain additional feedback or insights on my job process techniques. Maybe they’ll be able to help me optimize, or they’ll introduce me to contacts. I dunno. In the very least, the people are self-selected, meaning people mutually choose who they want on their team. So I jive with my peeps pretty well, and all of them seem really motivated. We’ll see how this goes for me.

This morning, I was so pissy. I swear to god, every year Bridge School irks my nerves. I logged in right at ten to get tickets, and John was telling me get the good seats. Well, the clock must have been like 10:00:05, and the supposed best seats were already all the way in the corner, just a few rows before lawn?!?!? Surely, there was some mistake, so I tried again, this time specifically selecting the highest priced tier. I should have known better and just opened a new tab, but I didn’t. And then I never got into the system again. Fucking A!! I’m such an idiot. I think something very similar happened two years ago too. I was so incredulous that five seconds after tickets went on sale, the best seats were so far near the back, that I was convinced something was wrong with the website. Then I lost my place in the queue and got screwed. Argh.

Today, I thought I would try to win tickets from the radio station, but then I didn’t ever turn on the radio. Whatevs. I only feel badly because we were supposed to go with John’s sis and her beau. My bad. She ended up getting lawn tickets maybe through StubHub or something. Event tickets are so ridic expensive. I’m really annoyed by it. I mean, are people really dropping like $500 pp at these auction sites?? Too cray for me. I’d rather go on a trip. I know, I’m so damn judgey! Ha.

After that whole fiasco, I had a phone interview 30 min later for an assistant director of social media gig at an area university. I had applied last week by emailing the hiring manager directly and attaching all my docs. That’s my new MO now. I try to bypass the job system black hole by just skipping straight to the decision maker. Of course, after I didn’t hear back from her in a few days, I did go ahead and also submit through the automated system. I dunno. I kinda likened it to government jobs. They’re very “by the book.” That said, I’m convinced reaching out to her directly still helped draw some additional attention to my materials.

Anyway, the call went well. She’s a little concerned about the salary– again significantly lower than my past gigs, but I’m actually kinda stoked about working in higher education and academia. Though the salary sucks, the other benefits (including tuition for classes) seem pretty cool. Plus, the lady just sounded like a really cool boss. And the role is on a small and nimble communications team… I would get a lot of opportunity to do a lot of different things and to implement creative ideas. So we’ll see what happens. Fingers crossed for an onsite interview.

What else. I had another info interview this afternoon. I’m up to like 45 info interviews now. The lady was very kind to meet with me, but she was pretty adamant about her job “just being a job”– and not her life. She said something about how some people have all these unrealistic notions about waking up everyday excited and motivated to go to work… I interrupted her right then and there and said, “I’m one of those people.” The thing is, my last job WAS that way for a long time. I really loved my job. And no joke, every Sunday night, I was excited about the weekend being over, because I could go back to work… Obviously, things changed and that’s why partly why I left but yeah, I want to wake up eager to get to work and happy to move the needle in some small way. I also want to be inspired by my colleagues and by the leadership. That’s what I want, and I’m not going to settle or apologize for aiming high. Anyway, it was an interesting conversation… and a good reminder that we’re all different with what we want to get out of life.