first day of work

i'm so out of it right now. tired as hell.

i hadn't gotten any sleep last night at all -- not because of nerves but because i'm not used to early bedtime hours. :-P i tossed and turned in bed for about four or five hours before getting up at about just past 5 a.m. to make myself a pot of coffee and get ready for the day.

notwithstanding the lack of sleep, my first day of work was abba-solutely great.

i have a giganto office all to myself. of course, there's no window, and there tends to be a lot of foot-traffic outside my door -- but all in all, i'm quite pleased with the privacy i'll have. my office is located fairly close to my new bosses.

exhaustion from lack of sleep actually hit me pretty early in the morning after arriving at the office. when 9 a.m. came, despite having had about 3 cups of strong coffee at that point, i was ready to find a place on the floor to curl up and snooze. i ended up having to steal away to my car during my lunch hour to sneak a nap. the nap actually rejuvenated me for the remainder of the afternoon, which passed pretty smoothly and flawlessly.

i've got no demanding duties or deadlines yet, and it looks like this week will be mostly quiet. but i still managed to learn a lot more about the job and how i came to be offered a job. here's how it went down.

i'd interviewed with the office around mid-march. i was interviewed by A and B, both of whom were looking to fill vacancies on each of their own respective staff. after my interview, A and B, who are sort of mid-level supervisors, started doing a tug-o'-war over me (isn't that weird?! fighting over lil' ol' me!). A was close to "winning" me -- but A also was aware that C and D, who are higher-level executive persons, was interested in creating a new position and mentioned me to them. C is a high-level appointee of the governator, and D is his special assistant, and frankly D needs help on a bunch of stuff because she's come to have way too much stuff to deal with. i then interviewed with C and D -- and then got the offer to work for them instead of for either A or B.

i met D briefly today. she gave me a run-down on the basic organization of the office and the entire department. i'll be doing high-level stuff, working on stuff that require me to deal with legislators, state senators, judges, and other executive persons. D kept reiterating how much interaction i would be having with all these high-level, in-the-public-eye people, as if by repeating it, i would finally start shivering in excitement or screaming in excited glee or getting my panties all moistened.

while i think it's cool that little ol' me will be entering upon that rarified sphere of persons, though, i think i'm just too jaded to be eager or excited about meeting those kinds of people. people are the same, no matter what clothes they wear, jobs they hold, or amount of money they pull in. i'll do my job and work as professionally and cooperatively as i can with 'em all -- but that's it.

but that's something i've noticed. even A mentioned today, in passing, that i should thank her for this huge favor she did for me in giving me over to C and D. i do not mean to sound ungrateful at all -- and indeed am grateful that all of them like me so much to want me. but a job's a job's a job. i would've been happy and fine to work for A, B, or C/D (actually, i kinda prefer B -- a very nice, soft-spoken middle-aged black woman who has a really charming personality :-T). each job pays the same salary, so it's really all the same to me.

and i'm just bothered by the fact that it should be considered "a favor." i totally didn't ask for any favors! does that mean i'm to "owe" her in the future? tit for tat?

psh -- i ain't like that. the idea of having benefits bestowed upon one and used as a kind of tally-mark for a certain, moral indebtedness is just funky to me.

anyhow, i do like D. she's a brusque woman with a very business-like manner. i like it. no frills, no wishy-washiness -- she tells it like it is. my impression is that i do think she's someone i can work well with without having to deal with bullshit.

she set me up with a small task to, i think, test my abilities. she asked me to provide a talking-points kind of memo for C to use for a speech he's giving in 2 days. she gave me a few documents from which to glean talking points and gave me an hour.

i spent maybe 15 minutes reading and re-reading the docs -- and then used the internet to search for additional info i could use. i was actually kinda scared and wary at first about the task -- i've never done stuff like this before. talking points? huh? wtf? but the wariness wore off the more i got into it. i finally presented her with a draft -- she looked it over keenly and started making a number of critiques and corrections while i looked on tensely -- and then she handed it back to me exclaiming about how great it was, despite having covered the page with all sorts of red-ink revisions. i was pleased with her compliment, and i believe that she meant every word; like i say, she has a real no-nonsense kind of manner and doesn't seem the type to use words unnecessarily.

yeah, that was the only real assignment i had today. the remainder of the day, i was loaned out to another co-worker in the office to do easy stuff. that co-worker and i bonded instantly after we met. she's laotian and has an office right next to A. within 15 minutes of meeting each other and shaking hands, she began giving me the d.l. on the office. was she talking shit? um . . . maybe . . . . did i encourage her? uh . . . well . . . maybe . . . . :) but she was so candid and literally had me cracking up. interesting thing is that some of her comments matched some of my first impressions of things, so it was a kick to have my instincts be verified by her comments. seriously, she's a total riot.

all in all, it was a really great first day. one lady i met was kinda crusty (and my new office buddy told me she couldn't stand her, either, which was good to know) -- but i found her actually warming up to me before the end of the day. the office isn't all that large, and most people are rather quiet-mannered, but i still got a lot of "hi"s and "welcome aboard!"s. still, i'll still be in observation mode for a while, i think; i haven't formed any full or definite impression of things quite yet.

anyhow, as soon as i got home from work, i was utterly exhausted. plus, there's been strong winds all afternoon that have wreaked havoc on all my senses and stirred up my allergies. :-P so i napped for 2 hours this evening after scurrilously eating a quick dinner instead of hitting the gym. oh, and my mom was quite eager to know how my first day went and wanted to know details immediately. i told her and she was quite happy. i think she views this as a potentially great long-term career for me -- in fact, she said something to that effect, i think.

*groan* i know this job will be fun and open lots of doors for me -- but i'm still reluctant in getting off the fence about being a career bureaucratic employee. i know my mom's hoping that i choose not to go to grad school this fall. i know she wants me to start building a career and forging a professional identity. obviously, i'm reluctant -- but in any case, although i've got to make a decision about grad school fairly soon, within the next couple of months, it's still to early to judge how this job will be. no matter what, i just want to be happy yet challenged in whatever livelihood i pursue. i don't care about the money i make, the "network" i'm supposed to create, or any of that riff-raff.

i exist only for myself and answer only to myself.

well, okay, and maybe my mom sometimes, too.

:-T

in any case, must get to bed. while i'm groaning at the prospect of having to get up at 5 again tomorrow, i'm also pretty stoked to see what tomorrow will hold. i'm pretty sure it'll be even better than today -- since i do hope to be better rested by then.

:-P