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Despite what many people think, “tax time” begins way before April 15th. Especially when you own/work for a small business. At the end of the year, beginning of a new year, there are reconciliations to do, documents to gather and files to audit. All of which I am working on at my new job.

I have to say, the new job keeps me very busy. Which I like. It also makes me worn out by the end of the day and I have to say my housework hasn’t been done in AGES because I am just way too exhausted by the workday.

Still, I enjoy the job, so I am not complaining. It’s probably a good thing I’m not married because my husband would probably be pretty ticked off right about now… (then again, if he was married to me, he’d be used to cooking his own dinner and washing his own clothes so maybe it wouldn’t be an issue… or maybe I’d find a man who thought maid service was a good idea (and if I were married, there would be no “servicing” of the maid by my husband!

But, I’m not married so there is no ticked off husband AND no maid service. Such is life in the world of MsCleanslate.

I suppose I should head to bed so I can be productive tomorrow. No rest for the wicked and all that!

I am not an accountant. I’ve performed accounting functions over the years, but I am not by trade nor practice an accountant. My new job has many accounting functions. I am picking up on doing what needs to be done but there are times when things just aren’t balancing or I pour over a statement again and again and it won’t come out right and I admit I get frustrated.

So… one of the things I need to do over the next few months is read up on accounting stuff and learn what I should be doing and how I should be doing it. It’s hard coming in at the end of a year and trying to make order of chaos when you don’t know what the person who created the chaos had in mind whilst they were doing it.

The boss wants to discuss year-end and how things will progress going forward. I have some ideas of how we can get some consistency and things/procedures that can be changed to make things easier for everyone. I know that it’s going to be VERY hard to sort things out/make sense of things for year-end and things are really just way more disorganized than I would like. I have a plan for this week and I know it will not go as smoothly as I would like because it never does but this whole working in the midst of chaos thing needs to get straightened out.

I also need to catch up on some things at home so I have time to get other things done. I had a four day weekend last weekend and accomplished NOTHING. UGH.

I figure I need to do something about upgrading my professional image a bit. Yes, where I work is casual but I feel like I should look a shade more professional (because the women who work at the other office on my floor all wear full makeup, heels and the latest fashions every day and it gives me a complex to have them being all judge-y when I walk into the ladies room).

It’s 8:45PM… can someone please tell me when I got old enough that 9PM seems “awfully late” to be up on a work night?

Guess what?

Starting on MONDAY I will no longer be a ‘temp’ where I am working. I will be a ‘regular’ employee.

I am SO excited!

So, what have I learned from all of this? That I am probably better off working at a small company than trying to be a good little sheep in a big corporation. That finding a job where there are people close to my own age seems to be a key to success. And I reaffirmed that I am indeed capable of learning new skills and being impressive AND I am capable of being LIKED. Trust me, after the job I had before this one, I was beginning to get a complex and wondered if I was just plain not likable.

I am hoping that now I will be able to actually write something worth reading about the Resume of Career Catastrophes. Maybe something marketable. Fear not, though… I am sure I will still have stories about people I interact with on the job.

Have a wonderful Holiday Season everyone!

So, three weeks into the new gig and I’m still diggin’ it. The only thing is that it is really unsettling being a contractor because it is very impermanent. I mean, I know that even having a “real” job in this day and age isn’t a guarantee but I hate the nagging fear that comes with being a contractor. Especially on days like today where I didn’t really accomplish everything I had hoped to/needed to accomplish.

I have a lot on my mind right now. I really don’t need the stress of worrying about whether a job is going to last. Is it wrong for me to just try to forget that every day could be my last day there? I finally feel like I have found a place I can be happy. I just wish I felt more secure about it all.

I am sorry I didn’t get here to reset the clock earlier, but I started the new job on Monday and have been out of the loop for the week.

So far, I really like it.

It’s another contract position but it’s not for a set time and there’s hope I may actually become an employee at some point (at least that is MY hope).

Am running out again tonight but I’ll be back and write more soon!

I had an interview this morning. First interview in 2 weeks. I want this job. I am absolutely terrified that I am not going to get this job and if you cannot get a job that SCREAMS “good fit” then what do you do?

It’s an industry I haven’t worked in before. You know what? The industry (which I won’t name here) is so specific that there just aren’t going to be a lot of people who are not scientists who HAVE worked in the industry. In the past decade I have learned legal and medical terminology, I taught myself HTML and some CSS, I learned 3 new (to me) software packages and was doing front-line phone support for them in a WEEK. I am not some idiot who just fell off a turnip truck and I can do this job.

I am supposed to hear something about this job today. It’s 3PM and I’ve not heard anything. As the clock ticks toward 5, I become more and more anxious.

I want to reset the counter. It’s getting close to 90 days. And November is coming, which means businesses are going to stop hiring until after the 1st of the year.

The waiting… is the hardest part.

In 1992 I was told by an efficiency expert brought in to the place I was working that I was in the wrong field and needed to get out immediately. I was five years into the career that I remain in to this day. I was told that I was absolutely lousy at what I was doing and that I could never hope to be a success at it. I had (and still have) no other skills.

Most of the time, I have felt that this person was wrong and that I AM good at what I do. Or, at least, I am not a dismal failure at it.

But there are days, like today, when I look at it all and wonder if maybe she was right. That maybe I do completely suck at what I do even though I’ve been doing it for a long time now.

I have no idea what else I could have done or what I could do now that’s different.

Maybe she was right. Maybe I should have listened. Maybe I’m just fooling myself into thinking I am capable. Maybe after a good nights sleep it will look better in the morning.

I’ve been neglectful, but it isn’t willfully, my friends. A check of the ticker in my sidebar will show you that I am still not working, so I haven’t been distracted by a new job.

No, I’ve been distracted by dealing with the job hunt. Whilst I am being asked to take tests to measure my integrity, I am dealing with people who I honestly believe have no clue what that word means.

Potential Employers… you aren’t doing ANYONE favors when you tell people you’ll “call them either way” and then never contact them. Believe me, I will remember every single business that did this to me and I will never do business with them AND I will tell whomever my employer is to never do business with them. Sure, that’s a pittance in relation to your HUGE customer base, but it would have taken a 15-second email to keep my wrath at bay. It is shady ethically and it is JUST PLAIN RUDE.

To the lady at the agency who knew the second she saw me that she wasn’t going to hire me but spent almost an hour with me anyways (and then never made any contact…I’m forgiving you for this because you could have told me “we filled the position” and shooed me out the door and you didn’t), I know that you could have (and likely your boss thinks that you SHOULD have) done things differently and I thank you for your time and consideration most sincerely.

I’m trying to keep my spirits up, but I know once we hit November, hiring will enter a freeze period. I am feeling the crunch, I am being less selective in what I apply for even knowing I will likely regret the compromise in the long run. “Bird in the hand…….” and all that.

It’s funny… I’ve been to a dozen agencies now… maybe more. They’ve run the gamut from the debutante cotillion type of atmosphere (“we just simply are not sure that you have the proper pedigree to work here…”) to the trailer park atmosphere (don’t blink, we’ll be packin’ up and movin’ on any day now…) Or maybe a better analogy is that I have been to both the Nordstroms and the Walmart of agencies. The thing they all have in common? None of them have any work for me.

So, that’s where things are with me right now. Be Well.

Since my job ended, I’ve found myself growing more and more depressed. Every rejection seems to hit a little harder, cut a little deeper. Every lead that just stops responding bothers me a little bit more. You’d think it would be the opposite, that I’d be getting used to the rejection but that’s not what’s been happening.

I’ve seldom left my home office except to sleep or use the powder room since Monday. And tonight it hit me that maybe that’s part of the problem. The office is no longer a place of work, it’s where I live.

And it needs to stop.

Experts tell you that if you have trouble sleeping that you should only use your bedroom for sleeping (and, well, other things that are legitimately bedroom activities… *ahem*) that way your brain gets trained to associate the bedroom with being a place you sleep. I would conjecture that the same lesson can (and should) apply to other areas of the home. I mean, certainly, there are rooms in the house that are meant to be multi-functional. And there are times when space constraints make it impossible to separate activities into specific rooms. (Ahh, how lovely it would be to have the money to have a house with a library and an office and a media room and a workout room…). But I think I’m losing my focus by living in the office.

So, I’ve cleaned off my desk and am going to try to turn over a new leaf. And try to actually be AWAY from the office a little more. I know it sounds counterintuitive to say that maybe I’ll get more work done if I am in the office less, but I think that it will actually work out that way.

So, the job that was moving glacially slow in hiring… has come to a full and complete STOP. I have heard the sum total of NOTHING since LAST Thursday. I think it’s probably safe to say that I won’t ever hear another peep about it. And that is something that I, as a professional person, just don’t understand. How can you work with someone for three weeks and then, with no warning, just never contact them again? You know, if I had done something and had been escorted from the building in handcuffs or something, that’s one thing. But nothing like that happened. I went and met with some people, people who I was told were not part of the hiring decision, and then… NOTHING.

There weren’t awkward moments. There were no questions I couldn’t answer. I am at a complete and total loss to explain how/why everything just STOPPED.

It’s terribly hard to learn from an experience when you are given no feedback and when you cannot fathom what it is that you said or did that was so horrific that you just never hear from them again.

Oh well, guess I just gotta get on to whatever the next thing is, right?