Diary of a Queen

I could be transferred over to another division with less than 18 months into the company, per company standards, but transferring out of that division without said 18 months is now against company policy. Time to start looking around.

I’ve been eating room service every night this week. Yes, I am in NY again. I’m working on that small problem. I was hired with an agreement of limited travel. Two weeks was pushing it, but the way things are progressing (or not progressing) here onsite, this work will continue another two weeks and even that may not accomplish the task at hand. So yours truly more than likely will not be in NY next week. I digress…

The room service selection is not very extensive so last night I settled on a steak that looked pretty tempting on the menu. There was a recommended wine selection so I thought “Ehhh, why not?” and I ordered the wine too. I’ve never been much of a wine drinker and especially red, but I know red goes very well with steak and I was feeling daring. The meal arrived and I was pleased with the appearance of everything. Steak, potatoes, asparagus (yes, I like asparagus); and what is that next to the steak? A stuffed tomato with cheese melted on top. Hmm, ok, I’ll try it.

I taste everything and it’s all great. I taste the wine. It’s very, very bitter; dry I believe you would call it. But not bad. I mix the stead potatoes, all good. I eat the steak with the wine, still good. I try the tomato…with the steak. Yes, you read that correct; I ate the tomato and the steak at the same time. I.do.not.mix.my.food. I just don’t. I don’t freak out anymore when it’s all on the same plate, but I keep it as separated as possible. So mixing something as abstract as tomatoes and steaks, that’s not me. But I did. And I liked it. If I wasn’t “enjoying” the wine so much (wine gives me an immediate buzz), I might have jumped up and down for joy. Instead I just chilled with my buzz and finished my meal (which was interrupted, but that’s another story for another day).

I mixed my food ya’ll! Yea!!!

I am so darn backwards! All I can do is laugh at myself. I’m put in the position to walk in the door of opportunity that I’ve been looking for for about a year or so now and I freeze up at the chance.

Briefly recapping, I was blessed a little less than a year ago with a job that saved me from the depressing, nowhere to go job I had at the time. I knew this new position was a door opener to the two areas I am most interested in: training and tech writing.

Today, I was put in front of the person who can help me get into training as a career. As we spoke, I expressed my interest in delivering training, specifically for clients. He began to tell me about some current opportunities within the company that could help me get my foot in the door. Without warning, my brain shut down, and took my mouth in the wrong direction. Brain said “You know training is in front of people; you know you don’t like to be in front of people”. And Brain is right, I hate being the center of attention. But despite that, I love training and when I am training I don’t really get that ‘center of attention’ nervousness I get in any other scenario. But since Brain spoke up, Mouth spit out ”Well I don’t think that I’m ready just yet to jump right in and start doing any instructing immediately; at this point I want to see what opportunities are out there and what path I should be looking towards”. WHAT?! Damn, did I just say that out loud?! I am such a chicken! I knew I was quickly committing suicide on this opportunity and some how I worked the words in that I was nervous at the thought of having to provide highly technical, expertise training to a group when I am not an expert in most of what my company offers. From there we discussed that a lot of the material delivered is high lever overview type material and we talked about the steps that happen behind the scenes to prepare for delivery. So together we put that issue aside and I saved face.

We concluded that I would work with one of the managers who currently delivers a portion of the two week orientation to work on learning that material. It was a logical decision because I am already familiar with this particular area of the company as I was just recently snatched from it to do the work I currently have to travel for.

I am NOT going to mess up this opportunity. I am going to work my butt off to overcome the nervousness. I am going to master this material and I am going to deliver it. And I am going to rock! There’s no room for doubt so I am starting right now to think past the doubt and into the certainty of my success.

It was unavoidable, so when I was informed that I’d have to fly to NY for work, I didn’t really trip out. Traveling is something I knew was a part of the business when I moved over to consulting. Up to this point, I’ve have it pretty comfortable so what can I complain about?

Explaining to the boy that I had to go away for a week however was an experience in itself. I’d never left him for as long as he can remember. The last time I left him was for my honeymoon and he was only 10 months old. He didn’t like the idea of me being gone at all. I have to admit I was little heartbroken at the thought myself. But I gave him advance notice to not catch him completely off guard and he was cool until about an hour before I was supposed to leave for the airport. We were at the park with my mom, who’d come down for his birthday that weekend, and UnkT and the kids. He came up to me out of nowhere and burst into tears. It took everything in me to keep myself together. It wasn’t that I didn’t expect it, but not right then. I thought that would have come as I was leaving to go to the airport. And of course his waterworks set off my moms. I swear the two of them crying together is never a good sight. He settled down after a few minutes and thankfully was distracted by McDonalds with UnkT’s crew.

I’m blessed to have friends who are family. They stepped in and made Mama got back to the airport safely and the boy was taken care of for the week while I was gone. It made being away a lot easier. My trip itself was extremely productive and a learning experience to say the least. In another lifetime without kids, I’d probably make myself more accessible as far as traveling to client sites just to be more in front of what’s really going on. In the meantime though…lol…I expect I’ll have to go back to that particular site for three weeks in December to assist with post production support. Before that, I may have to take another trip or two. The good thing is now that I have gotten the first one of of the way, it won’t be as hard and I know what to do differently. The boy got over on a few things and is suffering tremendously because of it, so I don’t think I’ll have to worry much about that again. As long as I don’t have to travel with four other co-workers again the next go round, I’ll be good to go too…lol

Stability is certainly NOT my middle name. Since I was 12 I’ve been moving around; hell I don’t think I can count how many times I moved between middle and high school. And even afterwards, I’ve still been pretty ‘mobile’. When Mama comes to visit in September this year, this will be the first time she’s come to visit and been to the same home as her last visit. Sad I know. My instability hasn’t been quite as dramatic in my career, but I’ve done my fair share of moving around in that arena too.

This is why I really have been and am still trying to stay where I am now. There was some major upheaving done recently in the project I was onthat had the potential to leave me jobless. And while I had the sense to look outside of the company, I was able to get things settled to where I am still at my current place of employment. The settled dust may bring some adjustments, however, that I really am not looking forward to; mainly in the form of traveling. It is known by those who determine my project placement that I am very against travel, however, that can’t always be taken into consideration depending on where they decide I am needed most. Single motherhood and travel weren’t really the combination I had in mind when I took this job. But staying with this company will position me to gain some great experience that I could excel with here or elsewhere if I so chose to. But staying comes with that sacrifice of possibly traveling. And I have to admit, the likelihood of a pay cut isn’t motivating me to up and jump into something else either….lol

It’s been an internal struggle for the past week or so that I’m still working on settling. I’m looking outside, but also working on the inside to make the best opportunity of what I have. Minimal travel and excelling in an area that would be beneficial to me would be a nice balance. Gonna have to hustle to make that a reality.

It’s still hard for me to believe that I work for the company that I work for and am having the experience that I am having. Many people in IT that have never worked here, have aspired to work for this company. The name carries a lot of weight and prestige. However, the real thing, isn’t anything like anyone dreams of.

I came in thinking, I’d work hard, earn more responsibilities and excel, as I have in every other job I have held since I was sixteen working in corporate America. This company was to be no exception. Yet, a year and a half later, to have a member of management tell me that this job is not one to take if you have aspirations of moving on and up within the company, was mind blowing to say the least. I guess I shouldn’t have been surpirsed; I realized that was the case about half a year or so ago. But to hear it confirmed by management…well that was basically my indication to fly the coop as fast is as humanly possible.

With my work ethic, staying in that environment is career and emotional suicide. I already feel like I have wasted my time being there; I haven’t accomplished anything besides earning a paycheck while finishing school. So for that part, I am thankful. And the name looks damn good on the resume. But other than than…worthless. The environment is truly breaking my spirit. I am not the same person there that I was when I first started. Nor the same person when I work on projects outside of work. I give the job about 25%…because that’s all it requires. I can’t function like that. My brain is melting dammit!

Ok now that I have gotten that off my chest, I can focus 200% on landing a real job. Once the message was made clear by management, I dug down deep and found all the resources imaginable to start to find the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s amazing what’s out there when you really start looking. I declared this to be My Year this year, and despite everything I have seen this year, I still believe it will be. My new job is right around the corner.