Ok, so I haven’t posted here in a LONG time but I left the blog up and running for 2 reasons.  

1. I know that many people are still struggling with unemployment and they sometimes stumble on this blog.   I’m always hopeful that it might provide them with a little levity and that it may help them to deal with their crappy circumstances
2. I knew I’d need a place to come and occasionally vent about every-day annoyances.

So here goes….. (for all 2 of you who still might be subscribed to this blog!)

RUDE PEOPLE

What the heck is wrong with you??

The Afternoon Chef Parade

Hubby & I just returned from a vacation in Mexico.  We stayed at a beautiful resort with amazing service.  Seriously, we couldn’t want for more.  It was all inclusive, 24 hour room service, mini bar, swim up pool bar, frozen cocktails, cocktails served in fresh coconuts,  .  There was even a parade of waiters through the pool area every day at 4:00 hand delivering an afternoon snack to you while you lazily lounge in the sun.

When you’re in an environment where people are waiting on you hand and foot, where you can barely drink the last sip of your cerveza before they are bringing you another one, where people are constantly smiling at you and saying hello,  HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY BE RUDE?

So, let me start with my first example –  before we actually arrived in Mexico.

Selfish Douchebag: As we are waiting to board the plane, and we hear the gate attendant stop a family of 4 (husband, wife and two adorable little girls).  She says to the man. “Mr So & So, we do actually have an upgrade available but it’s only one seat… do you still want it?”.  With ZERO hesitation the mans replies “Yes”.  And then he proceeds to send his wife onto the plane with their 2 kids to take their seats in coach, while he waits for them to print him a new boarding pass.  Yes, he abandoned his family, on the family vacation, to sit in first class while his wife cared for both kids, by herself, back in coach.  During the flight this man could be seen eating warm chocolate chips cookies as his girls sat pretzel-less in the back of the plane.  You Sir, are an ASS!

Ok, so we were still in the Tri State area and I have to be honest, while I think that guy was a complete jerk… I’m not all that shocked when I see rude or selfish behavior locally.  So, we head off to sunny Mexico.  Surely people who in a relaxed setting and are pulled away from their daily stressors will be smiling more, happier and in general, just simply nicer.  But alas, I was wrong………

Pool Primadona: As with most resorts, there’s a cabana set up to get pool towels.  You trade in your pool card and they give you freshly washed towels for the day.  Everyone walks to the towel cabana before they choose their lounge chairs.   Everyone that is, except the Pool Primadona.  She likes to grab herself a lounge chair and then call over one of the cocktail waiters to request that they retrieve a pool towel for her.   And, since everyone at the resort is incredibly accommodating, he actually puts down his drink tray and goes to get her a towel.   Ok, rude girl…. it’s obvious that you feel you are better than everyone else at the pool… I hope you get horrible sun burn!

Bitchy Diner: It bears importance to re-mention that this resort was all-inclusive.  There were 4 restaurant options, no reservations necessary and you could order just about anything you wanted.  On our last night we heard a woman ask for the manager’s name as she left the restaurant and declared she’d be “complaining”.  Shortly afterwards we heard her at the front desk bitching up storm because she was served the “wrong” wine at dinner.  Uhhhhmmmmm… did you forget that it’s ALL-INCLUSIVE?  You can order as many bottles/glasses of wine as you can possibly consume.  Who the F cares if you were given the wrong wine?  Order more wine, and more wine, and more wine, until you find one you want!!  For God’s sake, she could have ordered 10 entrees and only eaten 1 bite of each if she really wanted to BUT, she needed to be rude to the restaurant staff and she needed to complain to the front desk about getting the “wrong wine”.   Gives a whole different meaning to the word “wine”  or is it “whine”?????

Lounge Crowder:  This one personally impacted us and for the life of me I just don’t understand.  Hubby & I had been set up by the pool for hours… we decided it was time for a swim to cool off.  When we return to our chairs, we find that another vacationer has moved her lounge chair so close to ours that I can no longer lean mine all the way down for fear that I’ll have my head in her lap.  I’m not sure if she was trying to use my body as a sunshade or if she was interested in reading my book over my shoulder but Holy God lady, find your own space!!!  It’s one thing to stand too close to me on the subway because it’s filled with people but at a resort with lounge chairs all over the place why must you lie on top of me???

Anyhoooo…. I’m just amazed out how crappy people can be.  And, it gave me an excuse to pop back over here for a post!

There are tons of people out there dealing with REAL problems.  Unemployment, financial challenges, illness and these people, who were all enjoying a beautiful vacation, couldn’t even mellow out enough to smile, enjoy themselves and offer the common courtesy of respect to those around them.   I just don’t get it!

 

If you’ve been subscribed for a while and you haven’t migrated over to my other blog…. please drop me a line to let me know how you’ve been doing.   Hopefully, if you were unemployed when you started reading this blog, you now have a success story about being gainfully employed!!

Just for the record, I’ve had half of this post written for weeks.. just sitting on my computer calling out to me every day or so…..”please, oh please come back and finish me so you can post me on the blog”.  “yeah, yeah” I’d say.. “I’m friggin’ busy.. I’ll get to you when I can….”

Ok, yes, I’ve been completely slack about updating this blog.  It’s not cause I have nothing to say, it’s just that this summer has been filled with too much work, sprinkled with too many bbqs all topped off with a yard sale, many family visits and oh yeah, did I mention work??   It sure is a stark comparison to last summer where I laid around all day waiting for the phone to ring.  But, I guess one of the biggest differences this summer has also been the weather.  You may recall some of my posts from while I was laid off complaining about one of the worst summers on record in Jersey.

Well, it would figure that the summer when I had no job was nothing but rain and this summer, when I have 2 jobs, has been pretty sunny.  Not just sunny but unbelievably hot.  So hot in fact, that my electric bill just last month was a whopping $773 …. Yes, you read that correctly.  And, yes I almost passed out, threw up and cried – all simultaneously (which is no small feat) when I opened the bill.  THANK GOD I have a job this year.  Or, my dear hubby & I would have been pushing each other aside to get the seat near the window in hopes that a cool breeze would blow through our hotter than hell home.  But alas, I do have a job and we have been running our air conditioner for as long as I can remember this summer.    

Anyhow, trying to maintain 2 blogs has just been really challenging.  If you’ve been a regular reader for any length of time you probably know that I’m still trying very hard to maintain a somewhat regular blogging schedule at The Hubby Diaries.  I’ve just been challenged to find time to write posts for both.

A while ago I realized that I was way too stressed.  Trying to juggle 2 jobs (including real estate) and 2 blogs was really taking a toll.  So, instead of scaling back my life (although, I’m sure you could argue that I did scale back since it’s been over 2 months since I’ve posted here) I decided what I needed was a few Yoga classes to de-stress and re-energize.

So, a friend and I signed up for an “adult education” yoga class at a local high school.  When we arrived on the first night we were greeted by the yoga instructor.  If first impressions are anything, we were somewhat taken aback by our new instructor.  He was like 90 years old (ok, maybe 80 – but he didn’t wear these years well) and he had this very coarse voice.  However, when he did relaxation exercises his voice was very sing-songy (this was an odd contrast).  He also wasn’t actually very limber or flexible and as he walked us through different yoga stances, his brittle bones and aged muscles couldn’t quite demonstrate what each pose should look like.   He was anything but the normal picture you have in your head of a yoga instructor.  I suppose I shouldn’t have expected much from an evening class at the local HS, but what I hadn’t bargained for was pure comedy.

After an hour or so of stretching and yoga poses we ended each session with relaxation exercises.  This is the part of the class where you are supposed to let everything go and meditate a bit.  However, in his sing-songy raspy voice he would walk us through each part of our bodies, in unintended comedy.  It would go something like this..

Relax your toes

And your feet

And your ankles, lower legs & calves.

Relax your thighs

And your inner thighs

And your hips, and butt and nether region. (yes, my nether region…..)

 

Then he would sing (think raspy voice and hold each syllable for an unusually long time)….. R-EEEEEEEE-L-AAAAAAAAA-XXXXXXXXXXXXX

 

Relax your lower back

Your upper back, your shoulders

Your inner organs – liver, kidneys, lungs (I’m still trying to master how to relax my liver …..)

 

R-EEEEEEEE-L-AAAAAAAAA-XXXXXXXXXXXXX

 

Relax your face,

Your eyebrows

The space between your eyebrows

Relax your forehead

Your head

And all your scalp muscles (my scalp muscles hmmmmm…….isn’t my scalp –by definition- just the skin that covers my head)

 

R-EEEEEEEE-L-AAAAAAAAA-XXXXXXXXXXXXX

 

Now, bear in mind, I’m just giving you an overview here… this relaxation session went on for a pretty long time and I’ve left out a number of areas of my body.  But, I have to say that listening to him tell me to relax my liver, the “space in between my eyebrows” & my nether regions was enough to make me start to giggle in class.  I was so focused on the next odd thing that was going to come out of his mouth I had completely forgotten the purpose of this part of class.  Which of course, was to focus on myself and letting go of the stress throughout my body.  And, when I peeked over at my friend I could she that she too was giggling.

So each week, we went back to class for a bit of stretching, some de-stressing and about a 30 minute comedy routine.  This poor old guy didn’t realize that his well-intended meditative session made us laugh every-single-time we went to class.

Needless to say… I’m still looking for a new place to do yoga!

Until next time……  R-EEEEEEEE-L-AAAAAAAAA-XXXXXXXXXXXXX

Today I’ve been thinking about that old saying… .”If I knew then, what I know now…”

It’s so easy to look back with the beauty of hindsight and consider how things could have been…  So, as I think back to my 7 months of unemployment, I can’t help but think about how I could have spent my unemployed time differently. 

Now don’t get me wrong, I still would have job searched furiously and it would have been incredibly difficult to overcome the all-consuming waves of anxiety.  But, would I change anything?  I can honestly say, now that I am somewhat removed from it and I have a bit of perspective, I do wish that I’d done a few things differently.

Last week I responded to a reader comment by saying that EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. of unemployment was filled with self-doubt, stress, anxiety, depression.   It was truly the most difficult time of my life. Seven months of analyzing my life, my decisions, my skills, my opportunities (or lack thereof) and my inability to gain employment.  It was exhausting and frustrating and it wholly consumed me.  It occupied so much of my thoughts and my days, that I can almost say that I didn’t get anything positive out of this wonderful (and I say this with my tongue in my cheek) gift of time.

And that, my friends is what I would change. 

It’s extremely rare in adult life, that you are given the gift of time.  And, if you strip away all the horrible negatives of unemployment that is indeed what you are left with.  And… I wish that I’d taken a moment to look at things around me differently.  I wish that I’d done more with the downtime that was forced upon me.

It’s so much easier for me to see it now.. now that I’m back at work, now that I’m collecting a paycheck, and now that I have so little downtime.  I had 7 months to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, and instead I sat around in my pajamas and I wallowed in self-pity, with a bruised ego.  It was difficult to motivate to shower each day much less to “seize the day” to do anything more than search the internet for jobs & make networking phone calls.  I was swallowed up by the stress and depression of unemployment, so much so, that I wasn’t actually living.  It’s almost as if time stopped for me for 7 months.

I often wonder how different it would have been if I’d known, by some magical power, how long it would last.  I honestly believe that, if I had known a firm end date to my unemployment, it would have played out differently.  If someone had said to me… “you’ll be without a job for 3 months” or “you’ll be working again next February”.. or even if I had known that the term of my joblessness would end in 18 months or longer, I think it would have somehow felt different.   For me, the burdening weight was the unknown… the stress of not having any idea if I’d be working next month or next year.  The weight of this unknown was too much for me to process and was so crippling to me that I couldn’t take time to enjoy myself at all.

I envy those people who found a better way to balance their unemployed job search with activities they enjoyed.  Playing sports, walks on the beach, gardening….whatever low or no cost things that made them happy.  This is something I didn’t take proper advantage of.. and I truly wish that I had.

I know that if someone said this to me while I was unemployed I would have told them… “you just don’t understand how difficult this is…”  And, any time someone told me they were envious of all the free time I had, it made me mad.  But maybe I should have taken those comments in a different context, and heeded some of that hidden advice, to try to enjoy the time I had.  Because eventually it did indeed all came to an end. 

And now, as I look back, I can see it more clearly because I’m not clouded by all the bitterness and I realize that maybe, just maybe I should have done things differently.

Wow… I just looked at the date of my last post and it was over a month ago.  I actually missed the entire month of May.  I have to admit, that I have no idea how that happened.

I have tons of things that I want to blog about.  I even keep myself a running list of topics and I’ve added to the list all last month but I just couldn’t find the time. 

Returning to work has been it’s own interesting journey.  As you may know, if you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, I went from unemployment to 2 jobs.  My “real” job which is a M-F full time job (one that does occasionally spill over to weekends & evenings) PLUS, my real estate job which is completely done in the evening or on weekends.  So, I have found it difficult to fit in very much personal time into my life.  And, as you can see, this blog has suffered the consequences.

I also find it somewhat hypocritical that I’m still maintaining a blog about “unemployment” and “leisure time” when I’m no longer unemployed and the concept of leisure time is a distant memory.  I almost wish it was easy to change the name of my blog.  I don’t want to remove all my history, since there are still millions of people out of work (and people are still losing jobs today). I want them to be able to read through my unemployment journey and hopefully chuckle or smirk a few times, and I want them to know they are not alone with their feelings.  BEING UNEMPLOYED SUCKS!  Plain & simple.

I’ve often thought .. hmmmm.. if I did change the name of my blog what might be some possible new names be.  And, here are some ideas that popped into my head today.  And, for all I know, I’m “stealing” someone else’s blog name – because I haven’t actually googled any of these!

Overworkedandunderpaid   (although I’m sure there are plenty of sites dedicated to this topic)

Mynewmuffintop    (ok, the muffin top isn’t exactly new.. but it appears that it’s here to stay since I haven’t done any exercise and I had to buy new work clothes to accommodate my spilling over belly)

Randomshitthatpopsintomyhead   (this is probably the most accurate since most of what I write about lately is whatever happens to be on my mind that day… whether it’s craziness, ranting or random observations it seems to make it’s way into this blog)

Missingunemployment   (ok.. this is a tricky one because I do NOT want to be unemployed again.. but there’s something to be said about controlling all of your own time.  Even though I struggled with motivation and quite possibly depression when I was without a job, I do have days where I wish I’d decided to take my life down a different path that allowed me the freedom & time to blog if I want to blog.  I suppose what I miss most is the free time)

 

On any given day, I fantasize about writing full time.  Now, I’m not one of those people who dreams of writing the next award winning novel.  I’d rather just write anecdotal humor and my own personal musings that make people laugh.  That’s the outlet that my blogs have provided for me.. and it’s incredibly frustrating that I struggle now to fit in time to write.

Anyhow, I can’t make any promises but I do have list ever-growing list of topics to blog about and I’m going to try my damndest.. to blog more regularly.

My question for you today… if there’s even anyone still out there reading this blog….. is:

If you could create a blog/story/journal about your life (even if you already have one)… and you could give it any name you’d like.. what would you call it??

 

 

Ugggghhhhhhh.. I’m just plain tired.

Not like the tired from boredom when I was unemployed.. but the tired from working nonstop and having to actually think.

As I mentioned about a week ago, I had to go away for business meetings.  Here’s just a glimpse of my calendar over the last week or so.

Monday:  Wake up at 3:30am to catch a flight.. meetings start at 1:00pm and end after dinner (approx 10:30pm)

Tuesday:  Meetings start at 7:30am and end after an off-site dinner (bus brought us back to the hotel at 11:00pm)

Wednesday:  Meetings start at 8:00am and end after another off-site dinner (bus returns to the hotel at 11:30pm)

Thursday:  Meetings start at 7:00am and end at 4:30pm (bus takes us to the airport for a flight home at 8:00pm)

As with many flights these days… our was delayed and I didn’t actually get back to my house until 1:30am

(are you exhausted yet… cause I am???)

 

Now, for a wonderful example of corporate America:

 

During these national meetings with our entire team, my boss decides that he’d like to have a local team meeting on the Friday we return home!

So, I need to be at our local office (which is actually over an hour away from where I live) at 9:00am on Friday.

AND (hang on… I’m not done yet!) as if that’s not enough…..

Our regional boss decides that he’d like to have a regional team meeting on Monday of this week.

YES, you’ve read that correctly.

4 days of meetings with the entire national team….. followed by

1 full meeting day with our local team…. followed by

1 full meeting day with our regional team.

One might wonder why on earth anyone would need to have 6 straight days of meetings.

Well, I’m here to tell you that all of these secondary meetings were to discuss the previous meetings….Of course. .. Well Duh!

Isn’t that the age old comedic trap that companies fall into…. The excess of meetings to discuss meetings??? 

And.. here I am living through it!

My only question is…. When exactly am I supposed to get any work done? 

I know I’ve been slacking on posting lately…  sorry

Just wanted to drop a quick note to let you know that I’ll be travelling for work all next week and it looks like I may not have any posting time.  If I can squeeze something in, I will but ….  I’ll be back soon (hopefully!)

Spam is interesting… and no, I don’t mean that mysterious meat-like substance that comes in a can (which, just for the record in pretty interesting in and of itself).

I mean the kind of spam that hits my blog on a daily basis.

You may know, if you’re a regular reader, that I don’t post as much as I used to.  My life has become incredibly busy and although I try very hard to find free time to write a post, there are some days (and lately some weeks) where I just can’t get it onto my schedule.  It’s on these weeks that spam makes me laugh the most.  Today is a good example of that.

You see, if I’m away from the blog for a while, when I log on, my spam comment folder is filled with interesting/crazy junk comments. 

• There are comments about great places buy shoes. 
• There are postings about acai, super fruit juices
• There are numerous “people” telling me what an informative post it was … (and this is most often a comment on a post where I wrote about my broken coffee machine – yeah, real informative!!)
• Then there are the comments that tell me that I’ve been added to their RSS feed and that they’ve become subscribers to my blog.. which I obviously know is not the case.

As I’m sure you can understand, many of these comments are riddled with misspellings and FILLED with back links to God only knows what on other websites.

As a blogger, comments are that sought after, elusive reward for the time you put into journaling for the internet world.   They get me excited and make me feel good.  I get a little rush every single time I log on and see that I have confirmation that someone other than my husband & my close relatives are actually reading.  Now, don’t get me wrong… I blog just as much for myself as I do for all of you.  And, without this unemployment blog I may have gone crazy while I was not working.  So, it was therapeutic and necessary to keep my sanity.  But I’ll admit it’s cool to know other people are reading… and the only good way to know it, is to see it in your comments.

Anyway… back to all my spam.  Thank you WordPress for a pretty damn amazing spam blocker.  Most of these comments never do make it to you (the readers).  They are caught in a spam folder and I’m amazed at how WordPress actually knows the difference between a “real” comment and the crap that I get regularly.  However sometimes it does filter out some real comments so I always go through the folder hoping to find a “real” comment to send back to the post.  Today, when I logged on there were a little over 20 comments in the spam folder.   And, every single one of them was indeed garbage. 

It’s kind of sad to me that there are that many people out there writing programs to try to sabotage  my posts to dupe blog readers into clicking crappy advertising links directing you to buy Viagra or new shoes.   But, in the age of the internet where you can’t register your blog for a “Do Not Spam” list (wouldn’t that be cool??!).  I’ll just continue to sort through all this crap and chuckle to myself as I hit delete!

Well, it’s finally starting to feel like Springtime.  If you live in the Tri-State area like me, you’ve been anxiously awaiting a few warm days in a row for quite a while.  It’s been a really rough winter with snowstorms and rain storms that seemed like monsoons.  We’ve had to deal with flooding, ruined shrubs from the weight of the snow and even the gutters were torn off the back of our house during one of the rain storms that happily brought with it 70mph winds. 

Anyhow, my post isn’t to complain about the crappy weather from the past few months, it’s to celebrate the sunny days that we’re starting to see.  I’ll admit it, I have a horrible case of Spring Fever today.

And with any good case of Spring Fever, along comes the need for Spring cleaning.

I’ve really been too busy to think about my seasonal purge with the new job and the HGTV show and the Easter holiday.  It seems like all my free time has been filled with other stuff.  But today, as I opened my windows for the first time and felt the warmth of the sun, I knew it was time to start thinking about coming out of our winter cocoon to ready ourselves for the summer.

There are 2 things that help me with my sweep through the house each year…

One is the dreaded yard sale (not dreaded for me.. .but surely dreaded by my dear hubby – he just simply hates these things!). And, the other one is Freecycle.

I’ve mentioned Freecycle in my Frugal Living Post from quite a while ago.  But today, I thought I’d mention it again, since so many people do a Springtime clean and many people are either unaware of the website or don’t realize how great it can be!

If you are not already aware…. www.freecycle.org/ is a community website, searchable by localities, that allows you to offer & receive items for FREE!   You must become a member of your local community (takes just minutes) and you must abide by their policies (which are very basic) and off you go!

The basic rules are below (you should read the specific rules on the main page of your local Freecycle group):

• Every item you offer to someone else must be FREE.
• Any item that you receive must be for your personal use and NOT resale.
• You cannot post a request for an item until you have given something away
• Be courteous & respectful to other Freecyclers.

If it seems pretty simple…. That’s because it is!

This is a fantastic way for things not to get wasted or thrown away.  As they say, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

It’s also a great way to find a home for that patio furniture that you no longer need but that might be too good still to throw away.   It’s a great way to pass along all those books that you have boxed in the attic.  It may even be a way to give someone who’s really in need a working refrigerator that you no longer use.

And, what do you get in return??   Well, for one thing… you get a de-cluttered home.  You also get the feeling that you’ve truly helped someone else who might have been in need.  You get the peace of mind that you haven’t thrown something out that could be of use to someone else.  And, you don’t have to be bothered with scam emails from Craigslist as you try to sell something that you could have given away.

And, once you’ve given something away, you are allowed to post requests.  So, maybe this is the year you want to start exercising at home.  So, you post for some exercise equipment. Or maybe you could use some extra bricks to finally finish off that patio out back.. and maybe some has some leftover bricks piled in their garage.. it’s a win/win for both of you!

So, as I start my own Spring cleaning… I’m separating things into a few piles.  Yard sale items, Craigslist items, & Freecycle items.

It’s a great way to earn a few extra dollars, clean up my house and find homes for items that I’m no longer using!

Maybe it is……..

If you’re a regular reader you may have popped over to my blog wondering what on earth has happened to me.

And, if it seems I’ve fallen off the planet… well, I’ll be honest, I feel like I’ve fallen off the planet.  It’s been an insane few weeks for us.

I mentioned a while back that hubby & I had some exciting stuff brewing and that I couldn’t really share any details about it.  Well, while I still can’t share all the details, what I can tell you is that we had the opportunity to be involved in filming a new HGTV show.  This new show will begin airing in April and one episode will feature us renovating a room in our house.

The amount of time & planning that was required from us for this show was tremendous (about 2 weeks leading up to it and actual filming took 5 full days).  It’s reality TV at it’s best.  They created circumstances that pushed us up to, and beyond our limits.  Barely any sleep, an absurd amount of stress, a few tears and some friendly competition.  All in all, it’s a recipe for great TV.  It features people who are tired and cranky and people who have barely slept and are learning new skills (and sometimes failing miserably).  All so the viewers can get a glimpse into how stressful home renovations can truly be.

When we first started the process we were willing to take on anything.  After all, we were going to get a free renovation.  We were willing to bare our souls on TV, we were willing to sacrifice sleep, we were willing to provide enough footage to be portrayed in any way they choose when the show does finally come out.  Who knows how good (or bad) we’ll actually seem on TV… since I truly did go through every imaginable emotion on camera.

So, was it all worth it?  Now that I’m about 5 days out from it I have better perspective, I’d probably say “Yes”.  If you’d asked me the day the film crew left I would have answered a resounding “NO!”.  But, as I sit in my fantastic new room…  A room that we designed and a room we literally put our blood, sweat & tears into,  I can say that I’m truly proud of what we accomplished.  I love the outcome and I’m amazed at what we were able to create in only 3 days.

I’ll admit, I feel like I need to sleep for a month to catch up.  And, the condition of the rest of my house after it was all said and done, made me want to cry all over again (If you’ve ever done a major renovation you know that dust somehow gets EVERYWHERE and dirty footprints track crap into every nook & cranny).  But, we’ve slowly put our lives back together and vacuumed the carpets and washed the counters.  They’re small steps back towards reality but we’re making them….. s l o w l y.

So, was it too good to be true?  Well, if you believe that you can truly withstand anything for 3 days and you live life looking at the positive, then No, it was not too good to be true.  In addition to a new room that we love, there are many other positive things that came out of this experience.

• We learned a variety of new skills
• We made some new friends
• We accomplished something that we’d never dream of trying under other circumstances
• We challenged ourselves
• And… I can’t remember the last time I felt this close to my husband.  It was an amazing bonding experience!

Ok, sorry again that I’ve disappeared for so long….. but now I’m going back to sleep for a week or so!

Maybe you’re wondering where the heck I’ve been…. 

Well, I actually flew to Florida this past week for some training & team building with my new company.  It was a great week overall but, I have to be honest I have come home completely exhausted!!  When I first received the agenda for these meetings I knew it was going to be a challenging trip. Make no mistake, when the first item noted on the schedule is breakfast at 7:00am, and the last activity has you ending at 10:00pm, you are in for quite a ride. 

And a crazy ride it was… for multiple days!

The first day was an HR based training about developing key competencies for career growth.  It was an exercise that really forced us to consider our strengths & weaknesses.  I have to admit, it’s something that everyone should probably do regularly throughout your career and it got me thinking about some key things that could be helpful to job seekers.  My new company uses the Lominger Leadership Architect for development.  This model allows you to analyze your behaviors in 4 key buckets:

• Mental agility
• People agility
• Change agility
• Results agility

If you remember back to when I was interviewing, my new company uses behavioral interviewing techniques which are tied directly to this architecture.  And, I think that if you are looking for way to improve your marketability in this challenging job market, it might be worthwhile to take a hard look at your capabilities and your learning agility. 

Many of the offerings on the Lominger website are geared towards corporations and improving teams/interviewing/coaching/performace management BUT, in my opinion, this information can prove to be invaluable as a job seeking candidate.  (please keep in mind I don’t work for Lominger and I’m not necessarily promoting their products… I’m just using them as an example of how you can do some self evaluation..)

Now I’m certainly not one of those “self-help” nuts.. but I do think that you need to be constantly thinking about personal development.  If you can identify your strengths & the areas where you need improvement it can help you in every aspect of your life… not just in the workplace!

So, as I wrap up my exhaustive week…. these are my first takeaways.  And, this is only from Day #1. 

Day #2 overviews will be coming shortly!