New job

I broke down and paid some 300 bucks for the A+ certification exams, and the day after I passed them I got a contract position in Nashville for a company I'm not allowed to disclose. You've heard of them, though.

I start Monday. I still haven't quite adjusted to everything, though. After a year of being laid off, watching my unemployment checks dwindle and disappear, freelancing, going into debt, and having to hustle for almost every dollar, it seems almost crazy that I could think of something (certification as an IT technician) and then have it succeed in less than two weeks.

Oh well, I'm not complaining. I can move to a nice place in August and (finally) afford to splurge on some stuff, with enough left over to sack some away for a rainy day. I no longer have to ask my folks for help with bills. I'm pretty much set, even if I don't manage to go contract to full time, because the contract is almost a year and frankly the only reason I took it was because they were first in line. I turned down two other offers that were just as good, and I'm not going to sit still. I'm already looking for a MCSE or vendor neutral networking program. From there it's open source development, preferably AJAX. I'm already dabbling in .NET, but I don't want to be locked into the clutches of the Blue Monster. I guess it's the teenage angst that I haven't quite outgrown. Maybe it's that all the cool kid use open source. Whatever. I just want to make cool things, and tools are tools. I have a long way to go before I even need to worry about it.

About the job: something in me feels like it was too easy. That nothing changed between then and now. How could I not get the time of day from an employer a month ago, and be turning down offers now?

I didn't do anything special other than take a test.

And then I realized that I went from Clarksville to Nashville, and I went from a guy who had a lot of extraneous crap on his resume to a guy who was well qualified. All with a half hour of planning, a week of brushing up, and an afternoon of exams.

So I learned a lesson: you can be doing the right thing and be in the wrong place. You can also be doing the right thing and going about it the wrong way. I just wish it hadn't taken so long to figure that out.

posted by John @ 9:22 PM,

1 Comments:

At March 19, 2008 at 12:40 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hello. This post is likeable, and your blog is very interesting, congratulations :-). I will add in my blogroll =). If possible gives a last there on my blog, it is about the Home Theater, I hope you enjoy. The address is http://home-theater-brasil.blogspot.com. A hug.

 

Post a Comment

<< Home