XIX: TOYS

My brain is going a mile a minute. It's 2:30 AM on a Friday morning and my mind is overloaded. I'm having a lot of thoughts about the state of the world, but also my life and things I want to do. Things I am writing or could write. I was tossing and turning in bed, couldn't get comfortable, couldn't settle down, couldn't slide into my usual tricks. Hm. I had a bit of heartburn and took some Tums.

I've got a job interview coming up. I applied for this role doing customer support for a healthcare hiring app. I know little about that world but I have plenty of transferable skills and I like to think I'm a quick study. The thing that appealed to me is that it is fully remote with seemingly considerable autonomy, and it's not a job teaching AI what apples look like or whatever. The payscale is a net positive over what I was making at Indigo, so that sure doesn't hurt.

When I applied, they said they liked my background, so they sent me a case study. The idea was to look over a portfolio of clients and lost which ones got top priority. I was grateful for this sort of thing. That's the kind of deal that got me to Indigo home office on the first place. If someone gives me a chance, I can show my stuff. It says a lot about me that this stuff really fires me up.

I worked on it a bit on Friday, taking their raw data and pivoting it (actually making a bespoke summary table - pivot tables are overrated.) But the project was starting to overwhelm so I left it for Tuesday, when Mel was at the office on Oakville for her dentist appt. I didn't know this at the time but I had 7 days to complete it. (This information was somewhere easy to miss.)

I hemmed and hawed a long while over the material, thinking I had the answer but continuing to tilt it around until I came up with a variation I liked. I wrote a summary, then I had to make a video explaining my top choice. They said for it to be under 3 minutes. I barely cleared 1. This made me feel self-conscious: had I underthought it? Was I -- as I have been cautioned in the distant past -- too succinct? Well, it was authentically me, and if they wanted me, this would be what they got.

The next day they emailed to say they "loved" my response (it felt like a form letter albeit with unusually effusive language) and to book an interview. The interview, they said, would mostly be to further discuss the case study. I don't know why, it's all there, but if there's time to talk more about the job we will. The interview is Monday morning.

I'm trying to be cautiously optimistic, but there's part of me that wants to feel like it's all but a done deal, that this is my next job. There's certainly a nice symmetry to it, getting my new gig literally just a year after ending my old one. But it hasn't happened yet, and I need to steady myself, not counting chickens before they hatch.

I'm just very ready to be drawing a salary again, to stabilize that part of my life. To not feel like I rely fully on Mel's income, and to be able to get back to saving (and paying down the modest debt I've accrued in that time) and just generally ensure we can do whatever we want with our finances.

Weirdly, being so close to a potential job makes me feel a bit like the pressure's off, if only for a bit. I don't have to feel bad about lazing around for much of the day because I might not be unemployed much longer. And for all the help I accepted, all the paths I pursued, it would be something I got on my own... which it doesn't need to be, but does feel strangely like a point of pride.

I still have that writing submission in the back of my mind. Boy, 6-8 weeks ends up feeling like a long time when you're waiting around. Not that I'm expecting much, but it's out there for whoever sees it to do whatever with it.

Other things have fallen by the wayside, and I'm not particularly mad about it (although as my mind is demonstrating tonight, it's always buzzing around my psyche) but the comic blog has reached a milestone moment, the creative change-up in 2001. It was one of those things, you know. "I want to get to 1981. Then how far to 1995? Then how much further to 2001?" It was just over 9 years, plugging away at my own pace. What a ride, and it's far from over. What a thing to spend so much time on for so long.

Well, I think I have excised my brain enough to at least try to sleep again, let's see how it goes.

Keep on rockon'

Scotto