My first day at a big girl job.

Well, my first day back in a long, long time.  So that interview I had a few weeks back at Intermountain Healthcare went well and I tried it out yesterday.  It's just a summer gig, just to raise some money so I can hopefully not live in a tent in Austin (although if that is what it takes, I'm willing).

They asked me to show up at 8am, Monday morning.  here we go - already too much.  I slept most of Sunday and went to bed early Sunday night.  No one ever sleeps too well the night before a new job, tossing and turning, too scared you are going to sleep through your alarm.  I woke up about six, and figured I had might as well get the ball rolling.  I left at 7 and made my way downtown, parked in the garage and made my way to the top of that really tall building to get my badge.  Turns out you can't even open the door to the place without getting buzzed in - data people can be so dramatic.

I met with a really nice man who got me started on a project, going through a list of open ended responses and coding them into one of five main topics - not hard, a little mundane, exactly the way I like it.  I just don't have the mind anymore for writing code.  Anway, it's amazing how quickly the office life came rushing back, hour after hour of staring at a computer screen, bi-hourly ADD-induced walks to the water cooler to avoid insanity, in short - a perfectly comfortable, well-paying job that I...hated.  I remember spending 12, 15 hours everyday at that, sleeping under my desk for an hour or two overnight, thinking I was really going places. Office life, you really just aren't for me, are you?

Five long, long, long hours later I was done with that project and told them I should probably be heading home.  They were expecting that and I think they were happy with my work.  They actually don't have any free desk space in their department so were wondering if I would be willing to do this from home. Absolutely.  Perfect.  One of the hardest parts of the day was getting all dressed up, driving, parking, yada yada yada - pathetic but true.

I drove home and slept for 6 hours straight. 5 hours of work for 6 hours of sleep.  It was a good reminder that I really am not up to that life, no matter how bad I want a stable income.  Yeah, I could probably do it a day a week here and there, but no more. And that's okay.  My easy, at-home gig that a 8th grader could do...perfect.