Monday, August 31, 2009

a new, old leaf

After eight months of riding the freelance rollercoaster without health insurance, I officially start a new job tomorrow--and it's completely out of the field to which that I've devoted the last decade of my life.

It's sad for me to leave my career, but I'm still hoping to keep a toe in the pond of my withering industry by doing projects here and there because the new job is supposed to be part-time once I've been trained. We'll have to see how that goes. But if this ends up being a real goodbye, I won't be heartbroken. A long time ago I had visited the dungeon's illustrious tower on a school field trip and turned to a friend and said, "I'm going to work here someday." And I did. Sure, I sort of referred to it as a torture chamber (out of love, of course), however it really was quite an experience and I learned so much. So I'll have no regrets.

Today I went to an eight-hour new-employee orientation and got so indoctrinated about stuff like biohazard safety precautions and the perils of breaching confidentiality that I'm terrified to divulge details beyond that I'm working as a liaison between the paperwork people and the clinical professionals in a hospital. At least that's what I think I'm going to do; the department is in transition and no one is sure what this position is going to morph into.

While this is a new step, I'm falling back into some old patterns: a) I'm going to spend most of the time at my parents' house in suburbia while H stays in the city so we'll be back to long distance, though 40 miles is much better than 2,000. b) I'm slated to be working nights 2:30 to 11 p.m., which to some of you will sound awfully familiar. Perhaps I have always been destined to work nights.

But there's a definite plus: Even though I don't have any official medical training, I get to wear scrubs, so that adds another 20 minutes of sleep in the morning that I'd normally waste trying to figure out what to wear. Score!

9 comments:

Syar said...

Congrats on the new job! It all sounds tentative, and I don't want to be too eager but this is a step forward! And yay for scrubs. What colour do you get to wear?

Teej said...

Congrats! I hope you love it. The scrubs thing is certainly a big perk.

SupaCoo said...

Those extra twenty minutes of sleep will really rock... at 1:00 in the afternoon when you're getting ready for work? :D

Congrats on the new job - it sounds awesome! And I really do like the scrubs idea. Maybe I will start wearing them to my office job.

Noelle said...

I just had an extra 20 minutes of sleep, and it was glorious. Best of luck with the new endeavor!

angelciela07 said...

Awesome!!! Congrats!

Madelyn said...

Uniforms are great, and the fact that they are scrubs is twice as great. Being away from H, not so great. Good Luck!

Jon said...

I'm still holding out for a job that has no uniform, hours or bosses of any kind. And amazing healthcare benefits. Tell me when there's an opening there.

Other than that, it sounds like the new job is ok... if you like uniforms, hours and/or bosses.

cadiz12 said...

thanks everyone!

i'm wearing any combo of navy/white. the very bestest part is that my brother used to have to wear navy scrubs at his summers/vacations job, and i didn't have to buy anything new! double-score.

oh and in case i can't finish tonight's post by my 9 p.m. bedtime, today kicked my ass.

The Casual Perfectionist said...

Yay! Here's to being gainfully employed! :) Good luck!