It is slow at work which is good for a first week, so you all get a job update.

This place is great. I am having a hard time appreciating the good things about it because it seems to be too good to be true and then the hole will open up below me and swallow me when I am least expecting it. I am not excited about things like I would at previous jobs but the little things fit my way of doing stuff very well.

There are three of us in the Publications room. We had a discussion today that all three of us don’t like offices. We rather be in an open seating arrangement than closed away from other people. We are all Microsoft Power Users and are trading ideas and tips and getting excited over a new way to force a page break before a paragraph. We can get giddy over it sometimes. We have a fourth member has been here for years, works part time and will be moving away around Nov. We drag the two Proposal people into the trainings we are having and we all Geek software and file structure. It is soooo cooool!

We had a office potluck yesterday and almost everyone showed up. Someone from Walnut Creek who happened to be in the City managed to come by. There was food galore and people talked and enjoyed each other.

There is an office Bingo game. Different terms used around the office are put in a grid and if you hear one of them or get them in a new email you write down who and when and cross it off. This time around you win when you get every box around the outside crossed off. When you get the last box, you get on the office phone system which is like a paging system and announce Bingo. When I came in for one of my interviews, someone won the game and so the conference phone announced Bingo! Not the top of professional but a much better easy going nature that I appreciate.

They love that I ask questions. I try to rotate them. In some respect this job is below my skills like most of the work I have done over the last 8 years. In another respect, they are keeping me on my toes by asking me hard questions like how to get a Word table to behave the way it should and keep those settings when saved and reopened. And these guys know so many things I don’t. I am used to being the Microsoft Goddess so it is a little hard not being huge steps ahead of those I work with. But I think I can learn to fit in.

They don’t have snacks and food in the kitchen (unless someone brings in something which has happened a lot this week due to the potluck). The money is not great (about half of what I was getting before or I should say just over what I was getting before but twice the time). I am getting fewer vacation days. I have been very spoiled in the past with benefits and perks due to working for Financial companies. But here I am working for a company involved in Transportation Planning which I feels is a product/service that actually adds the betterment of the community instead of focusing on just moving money around. The people here are much more my type of people and work the way I like to work. They offer Kaiser which was a HUGE deal for me accepting a job. I will get over the last bits of being spoiled and fully appreciate where I am.

I am still having a horrible time getting up and getting to work on time. This place has flex hours so I am getting away with it and I am not sure that is helpful. It is something I am continuing to work on.

I feel that I am in a good place. A lot of the depression dried up when I started working. It is exhausting though. I get home and all I want to do is sleep. This is probably the first time in 3 years that I have worked full time and continuously. Another thing to get used to.