Birthday Present

Today is my 26th birth­day anniver­sary. Today I also gave my two weeks notice at my place of employ­ment. I final­ly have a new job after two years of look­ing! Actu­al­ly I had two new jobs. On Thurs­day I received two job offers with­in a few hours of each oth­er. One in New York City work­ing as web­mas­ter in a news­room for a big finan­cial news site and one for a web/graphic design posi­tion redesign­ing coun­ty office web­sites at the Cuya­hoga Coun­ty offices in down­town Cleve­land.

It was a very tough deci­sion. I spent much of Fri­day dur­ing my dri­ve to Notre Dame on the phone with folks in NYC and much of the rest of the week­end mak­ing cost of liv­ing cal­cu­la­tions and effort of move cal­cu­la­tions and lifestyle cal­cu­la­tions and talk­ing with my friends and fam­i­ly about the var­i­ous options. I’ve decid­ed to stay in Cleve­land. By stay­ing here I’ll be able to save more mon­ey, look for a house and con­tin­ue to broad­en my skills. And get a dog! The NYC job would have looked awe­some on a resume, would have been chal­leng­ing and pro­duc­tive, but the Cleve­land posi­tion con­stitues a lifestyle upgrade and the NYC would have been a lat­er­al move in that regard. I’ll final­ly be able to stop liv­ing pay­check to pay­check and will be doing work that is in line with my pas­sions.

I think I’m the only per­son who knows what a close thing it was. I’d already start­ed look­ing for apart­ments in NYC and rekin­dling dor­mant friend­ships. My mind was focused on New York and I had giv­en up com­plete­ly on the Cleve­land job mar­ket. Maybe the most dif­fi­cult part of my dis­cern­ing process this week­end was detun­ing that focus so I could be as objec­tive as pos­si­ble. I’m wor­ried that my friends in NYC will feel like my rejec­tion of that posi­tion will come across as a rejec­tion of them, and I don’t want that to hap­pen, because it isn’t. I’m going to build up my comp time and vis­it NYC some­time next year and take the folks who helped me out for din­ner.

But in the end I am gid­dy and grin­ning that I final­ly have a job doing some­thing that is actu­al­ly inter­est­ing and can leave the grim con­fines, patron­iz­ing pay and cor­po­rate indif­fer­ence of my cur­rent posi­tion for a place that treats employ­ees like peo­ple instead of infi­nite­ly renew­able resources.

In cel­e­bra­tion of my new job, here is a song: I Work For the Gov­ern­ment Now by Cen­tral Ser­vices. Here is anoth­er link to the same song, since you only get 100 DLs from YSI. I promise to be worth the tax­pay­er mon­ey that will pay my salary.