Doomed to succeed.
Just sent this out as an email to some friends in Oregon. I’d been planning a long weekend trip to OR later this month, and had to scratch those plans. The explanation as to why makes for a good update on my latest mundane news, so a quick cc to my blog for wide-angle dispersal seems like a real time-saver:
Hi friends,
Bad news: my plans for that 3rd weekend in February have become doomed. Doooooomed! Wait, no, that’s overly dramatic; what’s happened is that I’ve switched to a new job and a new work schedule since last month, and chiseling out a 4-day weekend in Feb is no longer going to be possible.
The upside is that I’m enjoying my work for this new employer, a B.C.-based organic tea & oil company called Flora (http://florahealth.com) w/ a States-side production facility and an herb farm(!) here in Lynden. Even though I’m still a temp, they’ve given me a regular full-time schedule from day one and every indication that they’d like to hire me onto their permanent payroll, once I learn the ins-and-out of operating all of the cool machines they use to mix & package dry tea and brew & bottle the liquid version.
I’ve just switched to the afternoon shift (3:30pm – midnight, M-F) starting yesterday, in order to do just that. A 2nd-shift worker named Jaskaranji is teaching me her job so that she can move to 1st-shift in March. If all goes well, I’ll be hired in and inherit her position by the end of the month.
It’ll likely mean moving into a new apartment around the end of February (which I hadn’t planned on) here in Lynden (which I *definitely* hadn’t planned on) and scrubbing my plans to go back east this summer so that I can instead stick around here for another year or 3 or 5 and see where this all goes. Classic case of getting what I need instead of what I want, I suppose.
It’ll also mean having to manage a finite number of vacation days again. Since there are weddings and things I’d very much like to go to this summer, I’ll have to hold off on requesting any long weekends away until I know how many I’ll have to go around.
If you’re curious: long-term outlook is still the same. Still saving towards launching my own business by age 35. Maybe this’ll be the means of getting there. At the least, a groomed path heading that direction.
Still hoping to come south and visit your fine state again within the next few months, on a quick weekend trip or two. No idea if that’ll actually be possible, but aside from this job Lynden is a boring town, so getting as far away from it as often as possible is going to rank high among my weekend priorities.
Stay sharp and be well. I apologize again for the constant revisions to my itinerary.
– Mike K
