Saturday, February 18, 2012

Tease, Tease

Can I just say how much I love my new job?  I've interviewed about 25 people to fill the 30 spots in the new apartment building.  I'm making 2-3 trips a week up there to assign mailbox numbers to apartments, choose one of the two offices to be "my" office, talk to the foreman about washers and dryers, and to answer many questions about the building.  (How's the rent figured again?  Are you going to enforce the no-smoking policy?  And the biggest WHEN can I MOVE in????")   The emails are coming full-force:  questions about funding, assigning phone lines, establishing emergency contacts, ordering a dumpster.  All the little details are swirling around me, and many are looking to ME to make the decisions.  It feels great.  

  Every time I drive up to the new building, I walk in and sigh with delight. After the past four years, I feel like I've won some sort of lottery.  Clean!  Bright!  A real office!  Walk the halls and it's cheery paint colors, new carpets, and a hair salon in the building.  (for the tenants, not for me.)  There's a sundeck, for Pete's sake, a SUNDECK on the second floor!

Yet all of this is going on while I'm still working my "old" job.  For every time I drive up to the new site, it's a four-mile drive back to the old one.  And those four miles away lead into a completely different universe.  Dealing with difficult-to-fill vacancies.  Tenants who don't care about their homes, their neighbors or heck, even themselves.  Lots of things, some of which are not worthy of writing about.  (I hate wasting my thinking time on them, let alone waste space on my blog!)  The stress level is reaching an all-time high.....bringing work home on the weekends and having my mind on my work when it should be on other things.  I'll be playing with the boys, and my mind will wander back to my desk.  It never seems to fully vacate.

After two years of knowing that this place would exist and now it's here....it still feels like a dream and that I'm never going to get there, I'm going to get woken up instead and realize that I'm going to be stuck managing the old place forever.  I just have to keep telling myself, it's coming.  It is coming.  I've seen it with my own eyes.  An office with built-in cabinets and a long counter against one wall, a glass door with my company's name on it.  A keybox that *I* chose the location for.  I'm almost there, I'm almost there, I'm almost there.  Hold on, just a little bit longer.  

2 comments:

Brian Given said...

I remember, not enough years ago yet, one time that I spent a significant portion of an afternoon sitting on a trash can rocking back and forth maybe only a few moments or singel comment from a nervous breakdown. When that work day finally ended I came home to my fiance, and while all wasn't forgotten, at least all was tolerable. I know there were no kids in the picture, or a mortgage, or all the other things. But I just want to say that rely on those around you and YOU WILL MAKE IT THROUGH.

Kristina said...

hang in sister - the day will come!