Tag Archives: patience

Still haven’t found what I’m looking for…

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If you would have told me back in August when I decided it was time to pull the plug on my Memphis experience, that I’d still be firing off resumes on the first day of spring in the following year, I simply would never have believed you. The irony of coming here in the first place was that I’d alwayherdsrd that getting back to the DC area was easy because no one from outside the area had any interest in going there. That may or may not be the case, but I’ve found that in most cases for jobs inside the beltway the typical number of resumes submitted for consideration is somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 with some running north of 500. I’ve got a healthy level of professional self confidence, but the odds get pretty long when you start talking about numbers like that.

There are still a couple of “maybies” out there that I haven’t written off yet, but it’s definitely slot slower going than I remember the last job search being. The department’s hiring freeze extending over the last two months, of course, hasn’t helped. The personnel office points only to the most recent memo that calls for the freeze to be reevaluated by April 1st to decide if it will be extended or to announce how hiring might be handled moving forward. It’s not reassuring that the hiring system will get back to something approaching situation normal any time soon, even if it starts up again in April. With a two month backlog and a notoriously slow process to begin with, things could be ugly for the forseeable future.

There doesn’t seem to be much to do now other than to continue piling my name onto as many heaps as possible and hope it turns up at the top of one of them. The federal government’s a big place and something will come along eventually, but this exercise in patience is wearing very thin. In hindsight, I’m sure this experience will be character building or something, but in the moment it’s enough to drive a man around the bend.

Waiting game…

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It seems that my fears weren’t completely unfounded. The fine folks at the Civilian Personnel office quietly posted a memo on their website yesterday afternoon giving notice that the current hiring freeze is extended through at least April 1st. So it seems Pennsylvania is at least another 30 days out of reach, if reachable at all.

On a positive note, I had an interview for a different job this morning. I thought it went reasonably well. It seems shameless self-promotion isn’t one of the things I have trouble with. Thank God for small mercies.

The waiting game begins again. First offer that at least meets my current salary and picks up the tab to move my stuff back to the east coast wins!

Mr. Freeze…

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It snowed in West Tennessee today, but that’s not exactly the freeze that is troubling me at the moment. It seems that news of my imminent departure for Pennsylvania was broken prematurely. Though not quite ready to retract the story, I’m moving it from the “cautiously optimistic” column to the “possible” category. It seems that in the interests of driving down operating expenses, Uncle has imposed a 30-day hiring freeze for civilian positions with the Department of the Army. Tacking that 30 days onto the 20 I had already waited to get the official offer and I can’t in good conscience rely on seeing a positive outcome. I suspect the human resources policy geniuses deep in the bowels of the Pentagon are using this 30-day hiring holiday to devise even more diabolical procedures that will make hiring and transfers even more complicated, cumbersome, and time consuming than they already are. None of this bodes well for a speedy exodus from the current unpleasantness. My expectations of enjoying springtime in Pennsylvania are fading rapidly.

This is why I’m generally happier when I’m in full pessimist mode – disappointments there don’t come as a surprise. They’re just the normal state of affairs and when things did go right, it’s an occasional pleasant surprise. I don’t know that I could ever be a real optimist. I couldn’t tolerate being so regularly disappointed when things go to hell in a handcart. At this point I’m driving on purely because I trust absolutely in my own abilities and the simple fact another six months of uncertainty is better than the absolute certainty of being stuck where I am. Just call me Mr. Freeze.

Terms…

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It’s possible that I’m starting to come to terms with living in a state of perpetual uncertainty. Maybe there’s a two week maximum on anxiety of this sort. After taking counsel in a dear friend last night, I’m reminded that getting things done the Army way can take much, much longer than should be reasonably expected. It’s not so much that I don’t care as it is that I’ve seemed to move beyond the point where fretting about it is worth the effort. It’s really an occasion where all there is to be done is lie back and think of England. The alternative is to pick up the phone and start ranting like a lunatic at the guy I’m hoping to work for at some point in the near future. That would probably be the operative definition of a situation other than good at this point. So, until further notice, I wait… and wait… and wait. At some point even the bureaucracy has to grind its way into an actual decision, right?

And holding…

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Tuesday will make two weeks that I’ve been sitting on the edge of my seat. No one knows that the gears of the bureaucracy grind slowly better than I do, but seriously all I’m waiting for is one simple phone call. I get that there is a laundry list of things that has to get done before making that call, but two weeks doesn’t seem like an unreasonable amount of time to get those widgets lined up. If I weren’t so stoked at the idea of bringing an end to my long mid-southern exile, I’d probably have more patience with the process. As it is, I’m feeling a bit like a 16 year old girl waiting to get asked to the prom. Honest. I sit at my desk waiting for the little blue light to flash. Or more often, obsess over why it’s not flashing.

I’m really, really ready to get this waiting part of the exercise over with. Every day, I wake up and grab on to the idea that today will be the day. I have to. Hope in getting that call is just about the only thing keeping me from climbing a nice belltower somewhere.

Virtues…

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It’s said that patience is a virtue. It is, however, not one that’s ever been visited upon me. I got the genes for impatience and a general tendency towards the impulsive. In fact not turning the living room into a giant cardboard box fort in three day orgy of packing is becoming the most difficult thing I’ve done in a long time. Such is my readiness to pull up stakes in Memphis and depart for climates north of the Mason Dixon Line.

All it takes is a simple phone call and all this pent up angst can come to an end. To be replaced, of course, by dozens of frantic moments trying to put everything in place on this end and that. At least then I’ll be doing something. As it is now, I’m sitting here looking at a room full of things that need to be packed up and endlessly stalking realtor.com. Neither of which feels particularly productive at the moment.

Have patience, they say. If anyone’s got the trick to that, I’m all ears.

This use to be easy…

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Writing use to be easy. I remember pouring out entire research papers in a weekend sitting. I wrote my senior thesis as an undergraduate in about three weeks. For God’s sake, I use to write short opinion pieces on politics and government for shits and grins.

My mind has apparently turned to mush in the interim. I managed to write about a third of what I had planned on getting done tonight and now my eyes are going all blurry while I’m tapping away on my laptop. I know I’ll get back in fighting trim in time and with practice, but patience has never been one of my virtues and it’s one I have no real interest in acquiring.

Bloody hell. Back to the mill.