Well now.....I am day two of this "retirement", "sabbatical", being out of work.....whatever it is I want to call it. There is finally time to start reading all those emails that have been coming in for the past few months since I posted my resume on (site withheld). In the past I was only glancing at them here and there, not having time to read all of them. Now I've got time and have been going thru them. This morning I applied for another contract position; one here in Tucson. It's with a medical device manufacturer. We'll see where that one goes.
My mood has been both up and down as of late. One moment I am excited about having this block of time off and thinking that I just might enjoy retirement and stay in it. Another moment later on I am stressed about how I'm going to do this, how I'm going to handle this, and feeling a sense of anxiety that was almost as bad as the anxiety I had earlier this year when I was starting up that new assignment. I guess I can expect more of this as the days drag on.
Sheila came over last night to watch an old Hawaii Five-O episode with me, after which we went out to the back patio for a long talk. There is one employer in Florida that is looking for engineers, primarily in Orlando and we were discussing that (one of their recruiters contacted me some weeks back). I haven't been to Orlando since 1986 when I was with my then supervisor, Clarence "Lumpy" Smith, who unfortunately is no longer with us. We were talking about Florida, and he said that if he had to leave California he would try to land in Florida, and I agreed. My then firm needed engineers at the Eastern Test Range near Patrick AFB and I thought about it a lot. I decided against it as that I saw that the work would be drying up in 18 months, and I wasn't going to go out there if I had to be looking for another job that soon.
Later on, in the 1989-1990 timeframe I was making some trips out to St Pete and I found myself wanting to get a job with that company, which of course didn't happen as that was overcome by other events. In mid-1991 they had an opening that I would have been perfect for; it was with a satellite project I was well familiar with. I would have gotten the job if I had applied for it, hands down. But at that time, like there is now, I was engaged and things then were stable and there wasn't really a need to pursue that opportunity.
Now I am learning that there are opportunities out there, and I have been discussing those with Sheila.
Sheila doesn't like Florida and doesn't want to live there. My preference is to remain in Arizona, but the reality is that you have to go where the money is if you're going to work and right now there is money in Florida too. One issue though with Florida is the distance of move and the other is that it's further away from my parents. I can get to San Jose a whole lot easier from here than I can from there, when I get that phone call that's going to come one day that I am needed in San Jose.
Sheila has green-lighted my contacting that recruiter again, and I think I will call her (the recruiter, that is) on Monday to apprise her that I am available. Phoenix though would be preferable, and much easier to deal with. Having once worked for that employer I don't know if they would bridge my prior service or not but that's a discussion that can be had later if need be.
I do know one thing. I am much more open to the idea of leaving Tucson than I was six months ago. It would obviously be easier to remain here for everyone involved, but as I said up above, you have to go where the money is.
No comments:
Post a Comment