Back from the abyss

Hello world, it’s been a while. Sorry for the lack of contact, I’ve no decent excuse beyond the predictable “life’s been hectic” adage. And perhaps too much has happened to describe any of it in any detail, but what the hell, here goes:

1 – News officially broke that my (former) company was closing down. Which brings with it the predictable angst of “what do now?” and its even worse cousin, “what is it I want to achieve long term?”. On both of these questions, I’ve been suffering a lot of anxiety and pull in opposite directions – for one, I’ve been LONGING to go overseas for about three years now, and something’s always held me back. There’s no better time to go overseas than when you get retrenched, unless of course you have a boyfriend with whom you’re about to spend your fifth anniversary…

2 - …which brings me onto the next critical occurrence. I applied for 2 positions with S.Asshole (I’ve copyrighted it, you bastards) in June, and the sloths have only got back to me now. One position rejected (I received news of my rejection by SMS, complete with the de riguer SMS abbreviations: “Tx for applying for position xxxxxx. We regret to inform u that u have been unsuccessful. Best wishes”) and one accepted – offer still pending. Everyone has advised me that having S.Asshole on my cv would be a terribly bad thing, so I have looked for alternatives – at the end of the day, it boils down to 2 alternatives: the aforementioned company and a consulting company that has told me I’m asking for too much money (despite the fact that I’d be working just as hard as at my previous job and potentially travelling more).

On this last issue, I have to be pretty discerning. See, if I’m making the distinctly large sacrifice of moving to the Poenda and forgoing my career progression, then why take a job where I’d be travelling 4 days a week, only to see the Gilb on weekends only (which is my current situation), instead of staying in Jozi where I could find a far more challenging job? My current thinking is to taken the 8-5 Poenda job and supplement with a part-time MBA to compensate. I simply can’t back down anymore – it’s the Poenda (where Gilb and I get to test our long-term yet long-distance relationship and see whether it’s worth continuing any further) or overseas; Joburg’s no longer an option.

3 – The universe has an unprosaic way of spitting on you for its own personal enjoyment. See, the day I became officially unemployed, I also had to give a speech at a seminar at Wits, and the beautifully ironic title of this speech was “Alternative careers for Chemists”. Of course, I opened my speech with the irresistible “Please take everything I say with a pinch of salt as I am unemployed and therefore not a stellar example of what you can accomplish outside of the Chemistry industry.” Ja, well.

There is much more to say, but I’ll try to share more over the course of the next few days, if I get the chance. What I’d love even more is to have the time to catch up on all your goings-on, please believe me when I say that a) I have very limited access to the Internet and v) I’m working harder as an unemployed person than I ever was as an employed one.

Toodles, and I’ll write again later this week.

xXx