Sleepies, Job Interviews, and Online Job Forms

EDIT: Please see end of entry for update


I'm a little on the cranky side this morning. I stayed up excessively late, even though I didn't need to. I was enjoying watching the Patriots trounce the Jets by a score of 480 to negative 50 (seriously, that is what it seemed like) and yabbering with people on facebook who were arguing over the unsportsmanlike conduct of "running up the score" that the Pats were doing.

Look, if the Jesters' defense had tried to stop them once in a while, the score would not have been "run up." The Pats were doing their job. The Jets obviously forgot how to do theirs.

Anyway, somewhere north of 2am I went to bed, Doug's snoring drove me out. I went into the study to the newly cleared off futon (there was so much nonsense on the futon a few weeks ago that I finally cleared it off and made it tidy and nice again), turned on the online radio to listen to Coast to Coast AM with George Noory, and then couldn't fall asleep because he had some crazy guy on talking about all kinds of crazy stuff.

Fast forward to 6am when Geoff came in here to do his morning routine of email, facebook and finishing homework (scared the heck out of him with my being here). I showed him how to turn off the internet radio, and I had to go to the bathroom but Doug was in the upstairs one, so Geoff followed me downstairs asking twenty questions.

• Why are you on the futon?
  
• Why were you listening to the radio?
  
• Did you know that listening to the radio prevents you from falling asleep because your brain is paying attention to the broadcast?
• Why didn't you just lay in your bed and stare at the ceiling and count down the hours until miserable morning?
  
• Will you make me scrambled eggs?

Sure, I'll make you scrambled eggs if you stop asking me questions.

Two nicely scrambled eggs and two slices of perfectly toasted toast for him later and I was back up in bed, curled up with Brodie, and Doug came in the bedroom to get ready for work. I was up, I was functioning. I was getting stuff done. I was scrambling eggs, for crying out loud. So why did I go back to bed? I slept until 10.

Once the house is empty of Men, I sleep. I sleep so deeply, so wonderfully. It is like a spell is cast on the house and this princess within. Fatty McFatty Doggies get up on the bed with me, and I just go somewhere else. This is when I get my sleep. And sometimes I sleep through alarms and phones. I sleep... and then I wake up mad at myself for pissing away the day.

Up with a cup of lukewarm coffee, I check my email and see that I promised my neighbor I'd drive her son to his orthodontist appointment this afternoon. I think I promised about three weeks ago to do this, so I'm glad she emailed me a preemptive thanks for the task (oops and whew). And then I remembered...

At the same time, I have job interview.

Luckily it is on the phone, but I'm supposed to be taking my neighbor to the dentist.

How cruddy do I look emailing the guy to ask him if we can move it up or back by about a half hour. Well I did. And he said he'll call me earlier.

Right now I do not have a great feeling about this prospect for some reason. I don't remember sending him my resume. It is at a big hospital in Boston, not the same one Doug currently works for or the one he used to work for (there are about six or seven "big" hospitals in Boston). I don't remember anything about the job description.

I seriously don't remember anything about this.

The initial email that I received asked if I was "still interested" which means they've been looking for a while, and I sent my resume out to them sometime quite a bit ago. Because I filled out an online form as a resume submission, I have no record of the date I sent it in. I went to their HR page and there is no "apply here for a job" option, which means they use some hiring firm, and God only knows what one it is.

I have about 30 different accounts with online HR resume rock tumblers.

Jobthis, Jobthat, JobCat, JobLemming.com, eHireme, eHireyou, ResumeKing, and the list goes on. Every company is different, every form is different, and I have no idea which agency they worked with to at least get me this far into their screening process. Which means, I can't check the date that I submitted for this position, and I don't have a job description either.

Back in the day (hardly) sending an email attachment with a word document of PDF file meant I had a paper trail. I thought about keeping a journal or log with dates, locations, job titles or something when I started sending out my resume, but that was incredibly short lived. The incredible zombifying act of sending out resumes into the ether over and over to the different agencies sucked the ambition right out of me. I send between three and ten a week into the silent, non-responsive abyss that filters out keywords and doesn't take anything else into consideration. I've had two job interviews... and this will be the third.

At this point, I am incredibly happy to have an interview, but the blurry miasma of online job applications makes me kind of feel like I'm going to wing and a prayer this interview. Either I will impress him enough with my honesty about my work experience and sparkling personality that they bring me in for an in-person interview or I'll filter myself out of the process. Or maybe they'll find me too casual and relaxed.

Fingers crossed that it is for the former. If nothing else, I'll schedule the interview so that I can meet Doug for lunch at the Beer Works again and have a nice afternoon in Boston.

I kind of sound like I'm not excited about this. I'd love a job. Honestly. My life would be so back to normal if I had one. I always am so much more "put together" and "organized" when I have a job that eats up my day. Because with countless empty hours in my day now, all I do is sleep, procrastinate, troll around facebook and get nothing done.

Thing is, the root of my issue is I do not know how I feel about working in Boston. If you had asked me a week ago, I would have no issues. But after what went down with Geoff at school on Thursday, I'm kind of reluctant. With both parents 30 miles away, constrained by the train schedules or traffic, it makes me nervous.

Doug pointed out that this was the first issue we've had since the END OF SIXTH GRADE with him. So we got all the way through that summer, through 7th grade, through the next summer, and now almost 1/3 the way through 8th grade. His track record has been perfect for such a long stretch of time. It isn't like when I was working in Salem or Marblehead and the phone would ring and I'd have to leave immediately. Luckily Gretchen understood my situation then, and I bet she'd be really proud of Geoff at this point after watching her employee walk out the door once or twice a week at lunchtime to go tend to her kid... That was a stressful time, but I think I handled it well because was 1/2 hour away by car and getting home was never a problem.

Working so far from home makes me nervous. Honestly.

Anyway... I am off to actually submit more resumes online for a little while. And I'm going to shower and fold laundry and wait for the phone call for the interview.

Wish me luck. Watch, by my not being too excited about this one (like I was for the two other job interviews I've had) this is the one that I'll be offered. I wonder if the universe works on that cosmic reverse psychology...

Edit: 5pm
Okay, so me feeling slightly unenthusiastic about this job was stupid. This is my job. I honestly believe I crushed the interview, that I am 99% of what they are looking for. I'm not going to start plotting out commuting routes, or figure out how much the T-pass and commuter rail are going to cost me, but I honestly seriously think that this job is mine.

From what it sounds like, it is made for me. A content management, web marketing position with Dreamweaver and Photoshop and a CMS that they don't expect me to be an expert on, working on a team that handholds/trains/edits/supports the departments and doctors and all the web initiatives. It's like the college job I used to have, only at a hospital. It's like when I worked at CMGi in the HR group, only in web marketing.

We were on the phone for an hour. I confessed to him that I didn't remember sending him my resume, and he told me my resume was in their system. I submitted it sometime in July or August. They started looking to hire, and then things came up that stopped the progress so he was using existing resumes in the system.

Honestly, I do not want to get my hopes up. Please stop me.