"So come pick me up. I've landed."
-- Ben Folds, Landed

As i was poking around on the Tufts University website searching for the course catalogue, i was tempted by the big red candylike button (or blue, as the case may be) that announced that there are, indeed, Careers at Tufts. I hit it. The top position posted for the day was an Adminstrative Assistant for the Residential Life program there. Huh.

Huh.

My mind raced. I love colleges and universities! I could take classes foR FREE! It would only be a 5 minute drive or a 20 minute walk to work! WOW! i wanna work at Tufts! So i redid my resume and submitted it online. I also put in two cover letters -- one totally professional, and one more personal explaining that i really want to work for THEM in particular.

Haven't heard anything back yet, but that was only Thursday.

A little early to be looking for a new job? Well, i'm not looking exactly. This was a job that jumped out in front of me. But what gave me the licence to apply after only being at my current job for four months was this... i'll tell you the analogy i like so well:

Global Protection was like a family. An abusive family. This is not news to anyone. I loved it so much because of the false sense of security, and i hated it because of how i was (mis)treated. It kept me so stressed out that i didn't have the energy to go anywhere else. But i finally did. I went to the hospital. FMC provides me with what i needed to heal. It doesn't ask me to get emotionally involved with what i'm doing or who i'm working with. It's a sterile environment, nurturing, quiet and peaceful, easy to get along with. It doesn't ask me to do anything i can't do.

I have learned a lot in my time there -- as useful skill set to make me a more rounded person after years of abuse. And it's been a good recovery. And now that i've had that recovery, i'm ready to leave the hospital. I thought, when i started there, that it would be a good place to stay for a few years. But that was from the perspective of having been beaten for a long time. Anywhere looked like a better place to be for a few years.

Now, i can see it for what it is -- a good place to have been. A successful healing grounds. And definitely a good place for me to be until i find the right situation for myself. For example, it would be really nice if i didn't have to factor in an hour and a half to get to the hospital and an hour and a half to get back. Either way you cut it, i have healed, and i am ready to go out and be challenged again -- to work for a place i believe in again, and this time, i'll have the skill set to really leverage myself to get a happy medium of challenging and healthy at the same time. I'm ready to go back out into the world.

I don't want to get too involved in a job search, because that would require more emotional effort than i want to put in -- where i am right now is a perfectly acceptable place to be. And it's hard to feel ok with where you are if you're constantly thinking about getting out of it.

I have friends on the outside helping me though -- it so happens that one of my friends was recently hired as a staffing agent, and loves the job, because she gets to help people all day. They get a lot of jobs for colleges and universities. Huh.

Huh. She has my resume.