Its Been A Long Time Comin'

Hell has officially frozen over. No, I don't mean the Eagles have made another album.

After two long years of endless applications, job interviews, and let's not forget those employment scams I've come to love so much, I have finally received an actual job offer. The formal offer is currently set to be made on Tuesday, and I could actually start work at my new job on Wednesday. Imagine that. A frickin' job. Guess I'll have to put off that order for a custom cardboard box.

After two years of being unable to sleep most nights -- staying up all night and sleeping through much of the day -- resuming the sort of schedule most people would call normal is going to be a major adjustment. It will also probably be hard to break the habit of checking the daily job boards (not that nearly everything there that isn't a scam,  is still not worth a crap in most cases anyway). In some ways, I'll miss that. I'm also going to need to pick up the pace a bit on my Neil Young book, since I very soon may not have the luxury of endless hours of spare time to write that I do now.

But I'll tell you what I won't miss. Number one would be the groundhog day sort of life I've lead the past two years. Sleeping late, making sure I get to Taco Del Mar in time for happy hour everyday (two tacos for two bucks!), and staying up till the sun comes up on some nights, and sleeping until its damn near gone down again. That type of stuff, like the vampire hours, I won't miss a bit. I also won't miss having to make decisions like do I buy food or put gas in the car today, or feeling just crazy worthless and depressed all the time (which also plays into the whole vampire thing).

And I definitely won't miss job interviews -- where the questioning has taken on a very invasive level of intrusion into one's private life and occasionally even a gestapo type atmosphere as though you were on trial for some unspecified crime (like showing up I suppose). Or even worse, when the interviewer takes one look at you, and already has their minds made up (I've even had one interviewer feign sickness so she didn't have to talk to me -- seriously!). I won't miss going to job fairs where nobody's hiring, but everyone has something to sell. I also won't miss dodging my landlord till the unemployment check arrives (and I suspect he won't miss that either).

Nope. Won't miss those interviews one bit.

The self-esteem is probably gonna' take awhile to come back -- two years of unemployment and poverty can be a real ass-kicker. But I'll tell ya' what? I haven't felt this good in, well, two years now. And as my boy Bruce would say, its been a long time comin'.

Can't wait till' I can also quote Elvis Costello by happily humming "Welcome To The Working Week."