The exercise:
Write about: an early present.
We'll see if this develops into a theme week or not. I just wanted to use something that would be appropriate for what I have to share and also for the holiday season.
Mine:
It's been a long and winding road (twice a day, five days a week) to get here, but on Thursday morning I finally got the news I have been wanting to hear since February. Well, even before that, really.
Anyway! I received a job offer from the Regional District whose offices are... drum roll please... here in Penticton!
Since moving to Penticton this was actually the third job I'd interviewed for, but closest to home. In April I met with the Town of Oliver for their receptionist / clerk position - basically what I'm doing for the Town of Osoyoos right now. It was a bit of a shock when I didn't get it. That would have cut twenty minutes each way off my commute.
At just about the same time I was going through the interview process with the District of Summerland for a position with their recreation department - pretty similar to what I had been doing at Osoyoos' community centre. They had a huge number of people apply, I made it into the final three, they 'agonized' over the final decision, and... gave it to somebody else. That would have cut thirty minutes each way off my commute.
It was a pretty harsh double whammy to my self-confidence.
Since then it was a pretty dry spell for suitable municipal job openings - I only applied for two other postings and didn't hear anything back from either of them. One with the City of Penticton, the other with the Regional District (for a position I was admittedly not fully qualified for... but hey, didn't hurt to try, right?).
Anyway, I was pretty excited when this posting came out as it felt, again, pretty similar to what I'm currently doing for Osoyoos. I interviewed on December 10th and felt like it went really well. At first, obviously. The next six days were a roller coaster of 'it went terribly' and 'I've totally got this' and 'they must have offered it to someone else' and 'no, this one is mine, it's my turn'.
So when I got the call Thursday morning it was a huge relief. It's a clerk position supporting the board of directors, which consists of 19 members. It's a much larger organization (my department will be 10 people as opposed to the 4 it currently is in Osoyoos, and the 2 that it was for much of the last year and a half) so there's more room for growth. And it will take forty minutes off my commute. Each way. Five days a week.
I start January 17th and I am counting down the days.
3 comments:
Well done on the new job! It sounds exciting and like it could be a fun challenge for you. Certainly more so that the first job you listed that you didn't get (though the Recreation Department one sounded good too) -- the notion that sometimes things have to happen so that other things can happen as well/instead seems to fit here: if you'd got the first job you'd never have applied for, and got, this one :)
So what are you going to do with your extra time in the mornings and evenings now? Start learning quantum physics? :)
Right, let's see what you're getting maybe-Christmas-theme week....
An early present
"How did you know?" asked Dana Bartlett looking around her in mild amazement. From the outside the place had looked like some neo-gothic take on Father Christmas's workshop: a cyberpunk building of iron and leaded-glass supported at the base by red-brick and decorated at the top with wrought-iron railings and a statue of a reindeer cast in bronze. Inside it smelled strongly of sawdust, the floors were solid wood and the walls were wood-panelled; the entrance and upper levels had proven to be the kind of conference rooms you imagined that Jeff Bezos would have if he'd been a 19th-century robber baron while the lower levels had been cold industrial workshops and living accommodations that were little more than austere cells for a particularly self-loathing kind of monk. And at last they'd chased Santa Claus himself through a secret door that he'd nearly managed to close on them into this room that looked and felt like a high-security National Defence Laboratory. Flat-panelled screens glowed showing graphs and figures and topographical plots; meteorological data filled more screens on another side of the room, and through a half-ajar door there were server racks and cabling dimly visible. Bartlett thought that having the cabling in green and red was a nice, Christmassy touch. There was another doorway that Santa was standing in, gasping for breath and one hand clutching his chest. Neither Bartlett nor Sox were falling for that again though, the old man had proven to be as wily as a fox so far and would certainly stoop to faking a heart-attack to get away. Past him was the now-familiar purple-white light that indicated a high-flux quantum entangler was ready for use.
"We spotted it four years ago," said Sox not taking his eyes off Santa. "A sudden globalised burst of quantum energy just after midnight that lasted for about twenty minutes on Christmas Day. There really couldn't have been much else but we waited a year and watched for it and saw the repeat. Twice isn't statistically significant normally, the circumstantial evidence was huge. So last year we just triangulated on it and we've been running an operation all year to identify the place and what's going on. He's good; this place was hard to pinpoint even with the new tools."
"And why?" asked Batlett. She'd been added to this case two weeks ago and there were still two high stacks of documents she hadn't found time to read yet. "I get that we're looking for him, but what for?"
"He understands all this," said Sox, gesturing around him but still watching Santa with beady eyes. "Way better than we do. So... he's going to deliver an early Christmas present for us."
Santa's eyes widened and he stopped gasping and straightened up. Bartlett noted that there was a faint shimmer as he did so, and suddenly he stopped looking quite so fat and jolly. Now there was something leaner, more muscular, more dangerous about him.
Sox pulled something from his pocket; from where Bartlett was it looked like a mobile phone.
"This is a quantum field suppressor," he said, waving it at Santa. "I'm pretty certain that turning it on in here is a bad idea, but I will if you try anything. Anything."
Santa didn't move but Dana felt that he looked slightly less dangerous now.
"Deliver your own presents," said Santa, his voice oddly high-pitched, almost squeaky. "It's not like it's hard."
"This needs to come this way," said Sox. "From Santa. Undeniably from Santa, not from anyone else. Or the... recipient won't open it."
"Who doesn't open presents?" asked Dana. She jumped when Sox actually took his eyes of Santa and looked at her briefly.
"I don't," he said. "For one. There are plenty of people who'd like to see me dead. Or at least, not working any more."
Santa raised a hand. "Guilty," he said. "But you wouldn't open a present from me either, so what makes you think your recipient will?"
"We have access to his therapist," said Sox.
Greg - thanks! And yes, now that I've reached this point it's much easier to see that what happened before was for the best, as this is easily the best of the three positions I interviewed for, both in proximity and career-wise.
The extra time... well, mostly will be appreciated for the extra energy. Eventually I would like to direct it towards more creative endeavours, as my writing projects have been languishing for a while now.
Fantastic opening description. And this is already setting up to be an interesting week! I'm excited to finish catching up :)
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