I have a job!
I've been in freelance-ville for about six weeks now and after lots of persistence (and a long series of fortunate and unfortuante events) I landed a job that is not only a raise, but also a promotion. I start on October 26 at the new place, doing pretty much the same thing I've been doing for the past 4+ years, just at a different ad agency.
Of course, this is great news, but if you could hear me talk about it you could tell in a second I'm not excited about it. Don't get me wrong, I'm extremely happy to have a full-time position locked up and the promotion was overdue. However, the place I'm going to isn't ideal: it's big, it's corporate, it's not exactly a hotbed of creativity--pretty much the opposite of where I've been working in for the past couple of years. But even all that I was ready to accept, because I needed a job. What has taken the fun out of the new job and given me a nervous stomach and kept me up at night (literally) was the other agency.
A couple days before I got the offer from the new place I got an email out of the blue from a great ad agency, which I'll call the other agency. They reached out to me and I thought I had no other leads, so I got on the phone with the other agency right away. There were a couple things that stuck out about the other agency. First, they reached out to me, which meant they were already interested in me. Second, they were not in New York, actually, they weren't even in the Northeast--they were tucked into a (comparably) small town with a very attractive cost of living. Third, they paid comparable to New York. Fourth, they were having a stellar year (yeah, in 2009). Fifth, they actually walked the walk during the hiring process (I can't explain with out revealing too much info).
I hit it off with HR and fell in love with the other agency and the idea of leaving New York--which Wifey and I have been toying with for some time now. We could have a house and a car and a dog and all the other things we miss in our lives! Imagine that!
Then I got the job offer from big, corporate agency. I had to rush the other agency, but they really liked me: they even hurried to fly me out for interviews before I had to accept/reject the job offer from big, corporate agency. Wifey and I had our hopes sky high because this was a one-in-a-million chance to make a lot of the life changes we wanted--and it looked like it was going to happen.
But it didn't happen. Once again, I don't want to go into too much detail, so suffice it to say it just didn't work out. It hurt. It hurt to read the "you're great, but unfortunately" email. It hurt to have to tell Wifey. It hurt to have to accept the NYC job instead. And to compound the crappiness this happened on our wedding anniversary and the last thing I wanted to be was happy.
Sigh.
Wifey (again) proved herself to be a bigger person than I am. The whole night while I was angry at nothing I could fix, she brought me back to where I needed to be. She was bummed, but not letting it get to her because it only meant that something bigger and better was in the works. And sure enough she was right: the very next day HR from the big, corporate agency let me know that they finagled a higher title for me that was not originally part of the offer.
It all worked out pretty well, in the end.
Now that my job situation is finally settled I can focus on more important things, like the NYCM that is coming up in less than three weeks!! I got my bib number today: I'll be in the second wave (10am start) in the blue start--meaning that I'll be running on the upper level of the bridge and not getting peed on.
