To be employed or not to be employed, that's no longer the question....

Short and sweet: I am now employed. Orientation is this evening which means I start next week. To say that I'm relieved would be a little bit of an understatement, but there it is. It gives me great joy to be able to play a more substantial role in living finances and expenses. Of course, my first paycheck won't be had for another two weeks, but how sweet that necture in the form of earned income will be when it is deposited into the bank.

These are tears of joy, people. : )

Overqualified or underexperienced?

Well, I have been job searching for the last four weeks, and last week I decided to consider sales positions, in retail no less. The main difference between retail in this area versus retail in my old region of residence is the number businesses in this area that appeal to me. At the moment, I have two very promising posibilities as a salesperson/cashier in large bookstores. These are nationwide chains that contain within their structures well over a hundred thousand items, the most of which are books of course but also include movies and music and accessories, and a coffee shops with seating areas.

I should hear back from them by Friday, but the wait is agravating. It's easier to just start working than waiting to find out if you will be. The functional term is IF. Although I am very confident about officially being offered these positions, I know better than to keep my hopes up.

Why am I having a hard time finding a position? Any position? Four weeks? Well, up until last week I have only been applying for very specific positions that fit perfectly into my interests and skills. However, no one was responding or calling for interviews, as if I expected the potential employers to have my phone ringing off of its wireless hook. From the follow-ups, I have discovered that the very same thing that was preventing me from getting any of my "desired" positions in Klamath Falls are at the very root of my not getting them here. There are basically three.

First, I am overqualified. This isn't to say that the work is below me, not at all, but certain employers are skeptical as to how long I would plan to remain as their employee. To a certain point, they're right. Of course, not too many people wish to live out their lives serving caffeinated or fruit beverages at low low prices. There is an inconvenience in having to search for a new employee, find one, and then have that employee leave after only a few months to "pursue better things." Well, I am where I want to be right now, so I'm not going anywhere. Also, I possess many skills, but they have been refined in a different environment outside of office/administration/marketing/sales/retail.

Second, and this is the most commonly used reason though rarely said verbatum, I am unexperienced. I've spent my life as a student, a professional student, doing little else that wasn't directly related to my major or within the music department. This makes me an undesirable because experience in those specific environments for which I've been applying hones the very skills that I already have. All I ever needed was an entry position. But no one would let me in. To put it bluntly, if I was going to get anywhere, I had to get out of Klamath Falls first. It's a nice town, but like hundreds if not thousands of others it is not a place to go to continue growing. It's a place to settle. It's where you go when you've gone out and accomplished what you wanted to accomplished and are ready to plant yourself in one place. I'm not ready to do that in that town. I've already lived there and I have everything I need from it.

So, if I didn't have any real work experience in the fields in which I wanted to WORK, it was because I was literally stuck. I have practically no experience and I am obviously not someone planning to stick around. The only way out was to just pick up and leave, find someplace where I COULD grow. In terms of my life, this was an inevitable step if I am to pursue my passion to expand my boundaries. Yes, we are all in greater control of our destinies than any of us would believe, and yet we have no control of our destinies. It's really the paths we choose to take, and who we trust to take with us that gives us control.

The happiest people I've met have learned when to let go and when to hold on. This is actually a very difficult skill for so many of us. Consider the number arguments we end up that never needed to take place, all the scars we bare when we never needed to be cut, and all the tears we cry when we all should be laughing. How odd is it that so little separates sobbing and laughing? Seriously.

...

I am so much happier now than I was three years ago, or even two. How is everyone else?

Carrboro, Durham, and Chapel Hill

So, to recap that which hasn't officially been capped, Annita and I have moved to North Carolina. We filled up a Uhaul and towed her car across the country. There was a lot to see but very little to really enjoy most of it. We drove through California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Tennessee.

It was fascinating watching the landscape and cityscapes change from region to region. My least favorite was definitely the New Mexico-Texas portion of the trip; I didn't care for the dry climate and flat mostly bare land. I enjoyed getting to see the rolling green plains of Oklahoma and forests of Northern Arkansas. Most breath-taking was watching a sunrise as we drove through the Rockies, and the most familiar was the drive through the Appalachian Mountains, mainly because of the trees. The trees in Arkansas and most of Tennessee were shorter than the towering pines to which I'm accustomed, and there were thick forests of these vertically challenged trees. This was made more evident after a recent visit to the Redwoods in Northern California near Crescent City.

Now that we're here, we're working on getting used to life in Chapel Hill. It's actually about the size of Klamath Falls, with a community that places emphasis on medicine and higher education. It definitely has a lot more to offer. Carrboro is a town attached to the west that houses many of the students and other employees of the University of North Carolina and offers some cultural diversity. Ten minutes to the north lies Durham with a population of over 200,000, a city rich with history and emphasizing medical research and technology. It's also the home of several universities including Duke. There's so much more that we have yet to explore. Raleigh is just down the road, a haven of art and culture in of itself.

And at the moment, I trying to figure out exactly how I fit into it all. This may take some time....