Category: Just me being me

For my fabulous Pocketful of Joules readers who are not friends with me on Facebook, I wanted to share my status update from yesterday:

“You know that feeling you get when you’re passionate about your job and actually enjoy working your butt off to do it well? I just found it again. Consulting is my jam.”

After months of feeling sad, listless and basically all-around pooed on, I’m falling in love with marketing all over again.

In addition to searching for a full-time marketing position, I put the word out that I was looking for consulting work. Some of my initial ideas for offerings: social media campaigns, event planning coordination, marketing plans, public relations campaigns, branding plans, creating & updating newsletters, website updates, grant writing, etc.

I got together with another marketing guru and he told me about a couple people who he heard might need some help. Two days later, I’ve got my first consulting client and I LOVE IT!

I get the chance to be creative again!
I get positive reinforcement! (What??? That’s like CRACK to marketing people!)
Oh yeah, and I get paid for doing what I love!

I’m on that heady ‘falling in love’ high where I realize that I actually do rock at my job, I just made the mistake of staying at a company who didn’t realize it.

I should have done this AGES ago!

Of course, when you’re used to having a steady job with a paycheck twice a month it’s pretty scary to quit and start your own consulting firm. So maybe I shouldn’t have done this ages ago. You know what though, for someone losing their job anyways, this is really the best opportunity ever for me to try a bunch of things that I love.

Wow, so this is what they mean when they say something is a blessing in disguise…

I have two weeks of work left before I am officially “let go” into the big, bad world of unemployment. I also have two weeks + one day until the big move. I kind of feel like I should have a huge countdown clock in my office so that people can see exactly how long I’ll be in the office before disappearing for good.

Oh, speaking about disappearing (yes, I’m going off on a mini tangent) — one of the very odd things about my current job is that when someone quits, is fired or is “let go” it happens very, very quietly (yes, I’m using my Elmer Fudd voice right now).

They don’t announce it to the firm. They don’t plan a going away party or happy hour for employees who have decided to move on. One day you’re in, the next you’re out. Auf Wiedersehen!

If you don’t pay attention, it may take you days, weeks or even months before you realize that someone is gone. In fact, there was this really nice guy named Ron that I didn’t see for a while and found out that he had quit about 3 months before. I’m pretty visible around the office, but I’m still thinking that it might take some people quite a while to realize that I faded out.

Anyways, back on track. For someone who really, really enjoys working, the idea of sitting at home doing nothing is pretty much the type of thing that gives me hives. So, here are the random thoughts that are going through my mind:

• What the heck am I going to do during the day? Looking for a job on all the online websites take about an hour a day or so, which leaves a LOT of time to do….what? Hmmm, maybe I can turn into SuperWife and make my husband breakfast, pack his lunch and make a delicious homemade dinner each night. Ok, I see this lasting for like a week.

• Oooh, yay, I finally have time to do all that stuff I’ve been putting off, like: write a book, blog more often, open an etsy store with all kinds of awesome crafty stuff, start a marketing consulting website and launch a new business, exercise, and more!

• Unemployment benefits seem really, really confusing. They want you to find a job and make money, but if you pick up side work you no longer qualify for the benefits. Or maybe you do qualify for the benefits, but it depends on how much you make that week. But if you don’t claim it they may lock you up in jail for 60 days. Which really doesn’t work for me because I really don’t like people all up in my business and I imagine jail would be a bit annoying.

• Yay, only 10 working days until I’m out of here forever!

• Crap, only 10 working days of having a full paycheck. How are we going to survive?

• I’ve worked nonstop for 12 years without more than a week off at a time. Even though I’ll be out of work and worrying about money, I’m kind of excited to have a couple weeks off. But then I feel guilty about that thought, because it is against my nature to fully depend on someone else to take care of me and bring in the bacon (yummm…bacon).

• Maybe I can get a part-time job somewhere doing something I like. Let’s Dish sounds fun! But is that going to mess up my unemployment benefits?

• Oh my gosh, I can totally wear my pajamas EVERY DAY!

• I’m going to be so lonely, who am I going to talk to during the day while everyone else is working? When my husband lost his job a few years ago he pretty much pounced on me the moment I came home, starved for attention. I don’t want to drive him crazy. I’m going to have to make a lot of lunch dates! But lunch dates without food because I need to save money… Hmmm, make that ‘water’ dates.

So, as you can tell I’m not only a master at multitasking, my brain is also very full at all times. Maybe by letting a little crazy out at a time, I can keep it together for a little bit longer.

In the meantime, I’m still going to spend a bunch of my time looking for a new full-time position. However, I’m also keeping my mind open for consulting or freelancing opportunities. It’s been a dream of mine for a long time to have my own consulting company, so maybe this is just the opportunity I need to see if I can make it work!