sometimes i feel like i have been trapped inside myself. i have a hard time saying things that i want to say. i rehearse and re-rehearse in my mind the way i'm going to say something, and try to anticipate the response i'm going to get. i'm always afraid that it's not going to come out right, or for some other reason i'm going to get a poor response from the other party. maybe what i say will offend them. maybe the so-called funny thing that i have to say won't be funny. maybe i won't explain it right. maybe it will just be stupid. i do this with almost everyone and everything that is of any consequence. something funny happened once when ___ and ___ happened… do you have time to mail this for me today… i really need more help doing ___… do you want to go do ____ with me this weekend…
to make matters worse, i think i have been like this my entire life. when i was in elementary school, i remember my "friends" laughing at me sometimes because i'd be thinking so hard about something i wanted to say, or replaying something that i had just said, that i would silently mouth the words. i never even knew that i did this. i also think my dad might have the same kind of problem. my mom has told me before that he's always afraid he might do something wrong or make a mistake. she says it's from the critical way his parents treated him when he was younger. what if it's something i've inherited from him? or learned from him?
all of this combines to make me feel like i have trapped myself into isolation. since i have a hard time sharing what i'm thinking, i feel like very few people really know me. and that's my own fault. even writing this was very hard for me, but i've been thinking about it a lot lately.
OK. I never have time to write anymore…and I really don’t have time right now either. But I felt guilty that I left you all hanging about the job interview. So I’ll summarize. I think it went pretty well….but I also don’t want the job. It would be a lot of added responsibility that could be cool…but would also be more stress in my life that I don’t want right now. It also took me 40 minutes to get there – with no traffic. So, with traffic, we are talking over an hour for sure. I’m pretty sure that driving an hour each way, 5 times per week, is worse than carpooling with 4 other people for an hour each way, twice a week. So. That’s that. I haven’t heard anything at all back from them…and I don’t care. Even though I didn’t want the job, this was a good experience. I learned that I like my current job a lot better than I thought I did.
ok, so my interview was rescheduled to Tuesday…from 11am-2pm…with 7 different people…
this is like a mega interview. but i know this is what they do at companies like Microsoft, etc. i just lucked out at my current job. because the job came up so suddenly, they didn't do a "mega interview" with me, like they normally do with other people.
the main thing that sucks about it is i'm going to have to take a vacation day, since it's so much time. that will work out OK if it turns out that i want/get the job…but if i don't, then i have just wasted a vacation day. and i still don't know if i want the job or not. change makes me nervous.
They want an in-person interview on Friday afternoon…!
yeah. it's been a long time with no blogging. sorry about that.
The interview went well. I talked with the guy for about 40 minutes, instead of the scheduled 20. I could tell that many times I said things that were things that he wanted me to say, so that's good. The phone interview was, indeed, a screener for those people who they'd want to bring in for in-person interviews. They said that I'd hear back, one way or the other, sometime LAST week. Yep – notice the "LAST" week. I still haven't heard anything at all. But he did say that I was the first interview in the second round of interviews, so I'm thinking that they are just waiting to get those finished up before making decisions.
I'm still interested in the job, but I am a little concerned about the stability and size of the company. Company X has about 1,000 employees, total. My Company has about 300,000, literally. That's a huge difference. My position at Company X would be as part of a team of 3 people. My position at My Company is part of a team of about 20 or so. Company X only has 75 people, total, at the office in which I'd be working. Additionally, although Company X is a good company, I'm concerned that if it went downhill, I'd be laid off. Usability is often like school music and art programs – if funding is short, it's the first to be cut.
So, I'm content to "wait and see". I haven't really made up my mind one way or another.
