Wheel of Fortune

Celebrating the accomplishment of another difficult management challenge!

Hi, I'm back.

To the three of you who read this, thanks for checking up on me. It's nice to know that you care, and I apologize for keeping you hanging.

My first week MIA was mostly because I was working several double-shifts (6:30am-10pm). Often I get some down-time to write, but each of those days I had to bust my hump for the full 15 hours.

Last week I was in beautiful Schaumburg, Illinois. Yes, I can see you all turning emerald with envy, but I wasn't there to enjoy the manicured lawns of the industrial parks, or to shop at the mall complexes dotting the landscape. I was in training - ATM training to be precise. No, I wasn't learning how to make deposits without the assistance of a live teller, the acronym stands for "Advance To Management."

For three glorious days I basked in the fluorescent glow of a small room at our corporate headquarters, soaking up knowledge from our crack Human Resources team. Ah, what fun we had. Eight straight hours of PowerPoint presentations, featuring such stimulating subjects as Finance, Sales, and delivering "Knock Their Socks Off Service."

I kid, because last year in Oregon I was in charge of the dizzyingly important task of stocking jars of baby food and boxes of crackers at Winco.

The reasons why I could be considered an incompetent loser in one field and management material in another elude me, but I'm not complaining. DAVs (another in the myriad of acronyms A/V geeks love to use, meaning "Director of Audio Visual") make an obscene amount of money. Salary information is confidential, of course, but one Director let slip that he was making at least a third more a year than I was making at the height of my career at Warner Brothers.

Yesterday, my own Director asked me whether I was interested in taking over our hotel, should he be promoted to another property.

Wow.

Anyway, there's no promise of anything yet, and tomorrow I'm starting back at SFSU. I made it clear to the Regional Manager that finishing my degree is a primary goal, and he still sent me to be trained, so I have to trust that they'll make it possible for me to continue. If it comes to a choice between them, I really don't know what I'm going to do. Either a big salary and an end to our financial woes, or a degree in Creative Writing.

Right. I know that for some of you it sounds idiotic. But I had no idea what job I was going to get when we moved here - the purpose of living in San Francisco was to get my B.A. and go on to get my Masters in Library Information Science. Had we no other desire in our lives than to make money, we would have stayed in our suburban home in Valencia, enjoyed the easy existence of our Master-Planned community, and I would have never left my corporate cubicle at Warner Bros.

Mia gets frustrated at me when I think like this. Not over the desire for a well-examined life, but over my tendency to project negativity into the future. I'm not looking at the big picture again, and taking a job does not mean that I'm tied to it the rest of my life.

But there is that male-stereotype part of my personality - my job is a big part of who I am. And after four years of un- and under-employment, starting over feels like a big investment of time and energy. Twenty years ago it was easy to be a grasshopper among ants. Not any more.

My daughter is sticking her bare feet on either side of my laptop, daring me to tickle them. Looks like I have some important work to do. Bye for now...