On the headphones: "Mrs. Robinson" by Charlie Peacock on West Coast Diaries Vol 3.

It's been a while since I've posted anything on my job search. Honestly, it's mostly because there's not a whole lot to say. Well, that's not true. There's been something to say, but I'm not sure what to make of it.

It's kind of like when I want to write about something, but...I can't. And I can't explain why I can't. Something in me says, "Not yet..." What am I supposed to do with that? Wait I guess. But like Mandy Patinkin's Inigo Montoya says, "I hate waiting." Yet that seems just like what I am supposed to do. I have been waiting with a big "not yet" in my job search. As Dilbert would say, "Gah!"

Strangely, it was when I was in Iowa interviewing for a job that I wrote,

Here we sit, without health insurance, without a steady income, without any real visible means of support. We don't know where our grocery money is coming from. Our mortgage for June is taken care of, courtesy of a short term temp assignment with my old employer.

That was an odd experience, going back to work for my former employer. "Steve! You're back!" seemed to be a refrain I heard often. But what topped it all was when a co-worker asked me when the moratorium was over so I could be hired back. I asked him what he meant. He went on to explain that the department's director had laid me off (in September) only to find that it was "a colossal mistake," that they really did need my services, and tried to hire me back the next week. He was prevented by the legal moratorium of hiring someone back after laying them off. Apparently, the rule is to keep companies from monkeying around with employment law.

I spent the rest of the day chuckling about the irony of being laid off because someone didn't fully understand what it was that they were paying me to do. I was a little angry, but it was misplaced because, since before I was ever laid off, God clearly had the whole thing planned out. Getting angry at God usually ends up with me saying, "You're right, God. I'm sorry. You keep doing what You're doing. I'll just watch from over here."

The real crusher, of course, was not getting the job I was hoping to get with my employer. It would have been an editorial position working with an online application. It was right up my alley, and the hiring manager apparently thought so, because they kept inviting me back for more interviews. But, it was not to be. My next-to-last day before my position terminated, I found out that they had chosen the "other" candidate who was an internal transfer. It stung a little, but clearly God has been trying to tell me something. Like not to go back to Egypt.

On reflection, it seems pretty clear. A few days into my temp assignment, I started getting "cranky," which is my wife's term for moody, withdrawn, and short with people. In a word...stressed. My wife said it was like going back in time to when I was working for them before. I wasn't happy there. I was professional, courteous, helpful, and willing to do pretty much anything that was required to get the work done. But I was stressed because...because...I guess I just knew it wasn't where I needed to be. In my time there in that temp assignment, I witnessed a clear divergence between myself and my then-former and -current and now just former employer. I don't know how better to articulate it. The cubicles themselves were foreign. The reporting structure was military and not relational, which I find more to my liking. Even stuff like passing people in the hallway with a grimace or a nod or a "heyhowyadoin" if you're feeling outgoing seemed odd and ridiculous in a way.

Remember Cast Away? ("Wilson! Willlll-sonnnnn!"...that movie made me feel more for a volleyball than I ever had for a piece of sports equipment.) Chuck Noland -- oh, the writers had fun with that name -- comes back to his life on the mainland after spending years marooned on an uncharted desert isle and finds that the things he took for granted are absolutely foreign to him. Even something as benign as a napkin or ice water is a different encounter for him. For reasons not uncommon to the movie, I had a similar experience. Now I'm sitting with my Jeep at an intersection somewhere in Texas. Do I follow that pickup truck towards something I know or do I go in another direction and possibly end up in Canada or some other unknown place?

God will provide me the opportunity I need to help provide for my family. I know that without a shadow of a doubt. I guess I just have to get in my Jeep and keep driving until he says stop or turn. In the meantime, I trust He'll keep my tank full of gas, my cooler full of Cokes, and my snackbag full of Twizzlers, trail mix and beef jerky.

Thanks for listening to my ramble. Please keep my family in your prayers. We have a few bills in the near future that we need to pay and we don't really know where the money will come from. He knows and he'll provide at just the right time.

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