Ok I’m suffering severe panic attacks. So I figured I should write about it. I know writing always seems to calm me down. So the last three months. I’ve been looking for a new job. Rockwell is fine but I want more. MORE. I want more than Iowa offers, I want to feel more. I want to be more. Everything about my life right now feels like its lacking. So I interviewed in this order: Yodle, Etsy, Google, Bloomberg, Goldman Sachs, OkCupid, Microsoft, Raytheon, Zappos, Northrop Grumman. I got to fly out for OkCupid and Microsoft. The Microsoft job I didn’t want. It just seemed boring like I would be testing office all day, no challenge repetitive tasks. Then I had OkCupid. LOVED that job. Thought it would be awesome. Met the staff everyone seemed great! I was ready to sign the dotted line as soon as I got my offer but I wanted to negotiate. OkCupid dragged their feet so I couldn’t cancel my MS interview. I flew to Redmond and was just blown away. Seattle was gorgeous. Micrsoft was Gorgeous. The team was nice, the work looked interesting, and then they gave me an offer. Holy crap the offer was so much more than OkCupid. I couldn’t say no. I negotiated both and picked Microsoft.
Then the drama. I wonder if there’s something wrong with me, but when big life events come up there always seems to be drama tied to it. The last time I bought a car it was nothing but pain. The last time I switched jobs I left in the middle of a reorg with a competing offer where I disappointing a good friend. When I bought my house Cedar Rapids was 5 feet under water the same weekend and my move was filled with nothing but flood related chaos. Aka almost every road from my friends to my house was closed. Going to Rose-Hulman there was fight after fight with my parents and drama with paying for it. Nothing in my life that’s big is simple. Maybe Big can’t be simple.
So choosing Microsoft resulted in me crushing my sister. The last thing in the world I ever want to do. It meant going against what I had always thought I was going to do. It made me give up the job I was super excited for, but the potential was just too great. So after causing disappointment with my sister, oh and disappointing my potential new boss at RC who offered me a job and wanted to send me to France for several weeks. But I accepted MS on a Thursday afternoon.
Apparently my offer couldn’t be made official because my the job didn’t exist since I negotiated a promotion. So she had to create the job. Started on Friday, its Monday and I’m still without a final offer. I’ve accepted informally and my HR rep keeps reassuring but I’m going nuts. I declined both my offers leaving me in a spot that I’m unhappy with. If this doesn’t go through I’m completely screwed. Well not screwed, but my life, the life I want… the life I crave will remain on hold. What is worse is I turned down a dream job. So if MS drops the ball and I killed my alternative dreams where does that leave me? Empty is the only feeling I can think of. Falling through the abyss of nothingness. Neither going forward or back. Everyone keeps telling me to be patient. To calm myself down. Its not who I am, I don’t like not controlling my future. Maybe this is where I suffer in big life choices. They are too big for me to control by myself and the second I have to let go I start to panic. Its probably the result of the constant let down from my parents, who knows. Really don’t need to get all Freudian here. Either way for the love of god I just need this resolved. I want to move, I want to put my two weeks in, I want to move forward!!! Let me move forward Microsoft…