temping

Last Monday (7th July)... out of the blue, I was offered temporary full-time work as a receptionist at a busy office.

I've never really done this kind of work before.

I literally threw on makeup, clothes...office suitable of course...and tore the brush through my hair and fled out the door to this job!

It was like a bolt from the Heavens!

Only that previous weekend, I had been noting how slack and despondent in my daily routines I was becoming. Unemployment does that to a person, it sucks out the motivation from within like a vacuum cleaner!

Since I left my marriage in May, I've been on the job hunting treadmill; applying to vacancies in the local paper and checking online job sites etc to no avail. I'd get the occasional interview, but nothing much after that.

It's easy to lose your sparkle and your sense of worth after awhile in a situation like this. You wonder why no one wants you and what is it that you're doing wrong. You wonder if you're too old, too ugly, too self-conscious, too anything.

It's a really major mind meltdown if you let it get that way.

I was close.

Most of these past few weeks, I've remained resolutely optimistic that I would find "my ideal job" sometime within the very near future. I tried very deliberately to not let the "rejection" letters in my mailbox get me down.

But after two more arrived Friday week ago, I spent most of last weekend feeling very unsure of myself and anxious to try anything different. As the saying goes, "Keep doing the same old things and you'll keep getting the same results". I didn't want the same results, I needed different results! The bills were coming in my mailbox too and I need to get off the welfare job-seekers miserly "pay" and make my own way in this world!

So there I was! Monday morning. I spent some time chatting to friends in Second Life but after that, I wondered what there was to do in my life that would be constructive and purposeful and would bring some kind of gratifying reward! That was about 11:00am. Then the phone rang.

By 12:10, I was in a busy corporate office, in town here, thrown completely for a loop on a job I've not done before.

The world turns on the head of a pin some days. Sure! It IS only a temporary job, but whatever happens, I'm working and I feel like I'm getting somewhere again. I know I can do this job! I have been doing pieces of it for years!

The job involves lots of things. Meeting, greeting people either face to face, or over the phone. There's lots of typing to do, a huge database to learn, files and procedures and all manner of regulatory obligations etc.

All of it is sort of familiar and so very not. There are pieces of this job I have done many times in the past, but this is the first time I have combined all those pieces into a cohesive role. It's daunting, exhilarating, exasperating, energising and I'm utterly and completely exhausted as I write this after the first (almost) full-time week of working 8:30-5:00 that I've done in some time!

I have no idea when this job will end. Whatever happens, it will still look great on my resume. I'm going to have to learn so much and it surprises me how rusty my short-term memory skills have become! I hope I can get that memory thing back next week ASAP! It's an absolute requirement of the job to have all the T's crossed and all the i's dotted! My shocking...perhaps appalling...short-term memory is going to get a right jolly good old workout at this job, which it well needs.

I worked out my pay for this past week and I am more than gratified. It's better than I could have imagined or expected, so while on the one hand I'm terrified that I'll not make a good enough impression, or do a good enough job to be kept on permanently, I'm also extremely excited at this amazing opportunity for growth, particularly financial!

It still looks great on my resume :) That's gotta count for something in the long run yeah? :)

I'm there next week. After that, who knows? :)