Update

Things have been happening very quickly this last week. It was only last Tuesday that I accepted a position at Kid Power as the Operations Director and now I am sitting here at my desk on my third day of work. I didn't end up going to that other job interview and instead decided to stop looking and take the position I had been offered. The stuff I am currently working on is stuff that I probably would be doing anyway since this is the time between summer camp and school year programing. I am being put in charge of a lot of the office organizing - looking for a place where we can get rid of old office furniture, cleaning our filing cabinets, organizing binders and throwing out old papers. I am also putting together packets and binders for our new site coordinators (what I was last year) and planning out some trainings for them. Like I said, right now the position doesn't feel very different, but once our programs begin and the year gets started I am sure that will change. 

My room is coming together! I have all the furniture in there, most of my clothes moved down, curtains hung, and a new lamp bought. I started sleeping in there Monday, but still am not finished moving because yesterday our flag football team had a double header so we weren't done until 8:30 or 9 and then I was too tired and hungry to move anything. Saturday was our cleaning day and I have to say that I don't know if the bathrooms in that house have ever been so clean. We spent time on the basement as well so now our little livingroom place feels much more useable which I appreciate. I need to get a dehumidifier for the basement and our laundry area could use a once over, but on the whole it is all looking very nice. Again, I promise to have pictures up before the week is out. Perhaps tonight I will be able to finish the move and take a few to put up here. 

Job News

I am very excited to announce that I have accepted a position as Operations Director at Kid Power. This is the same place I have been working (through MVS) for the last year, but now I get paid!! This position is a new one in which I will be taking on a variety of responsibilities such as training new staff, completing site visits for quality control, entering attendance data, and various other office duties. I still have another job interview for a math teaching position tomorrow. I may or may not go since I am not sure how I feel about being a classroom teacher at this point. I have to have an entire hour long lesson ready to go as part of the interview process so I am going to begin working on that tonight in case I decide to go. The thing is, I am feeling really excited about this position at Kid Power and know that I will enjoy working there. During the last year I have been doing a lot of thinking about what I want to do as far as a career. I realize I am not passionate about teaching, but it is what I am qualified to do. Teaching also pays better than what I am doing now so I almost feel like I am cheating myself. But teaching is much more demanding and I won't be done with work when I get home at 6 each evening. I don't know if I am trying to justify wanting to take the Kid Power job (because it is easier) or if I honestly don't want to teach at all. Before other job interviews Ihave felt nervous, but right now I feel a sense of dread. Perhaps God has provided me with my answer simply through that. I am afraid that I am over-thinking everything now.

In other news since I am staying in the MVS house next year I am planning on moving to the basement where I will have my own bathroom. The room is only 8' x 13' and has no carpeting - only cold rough cement. The room I am in now is twice the size. It was also a really ugly bright purple until yesterday. I spent my first day of unemployment painting the room "bird's egg blue" and I painted the trim "woven basket" yellow today. The yellow is left over from when Mom and I painted my current room back in October. I am excited to get some carpeting and put up lights in the closet so that I can begin moving in at some point. It still needs a lot of work, but it is looking 100x's better already. There is still trim missing from around the door to the room and all along one wall. I have "before" and "during" pictures, but I am going to wait to post them until I have the "after" pictures as well. To be clear, I am not being forced to move to the basement, I decided that since I am going to be changing rooms anyway having a project to work on while I am unemployed sounded good. I like the idea of taking something ugly and run down and getting it into much nicer shape. Also I have a few leads on carpeting so that should be taken care of by the end of the week. I am hoping to be moved sometime next week so I will post pictures then.

Where I place my hope

I still have not gotten a job offer. I know that I could be really stressed out about this, but I have been working really hard on making sure that I am placing my hope in Christ. Today during work I listened to a sermon I missed while I was home a few weeks ago. It is titled Being a Woman and if you are interested you can listen to it here. It reminded me once again that ultimately I have no control over my future and stressing is not going to help. I need to learn to be happy with who I am and trust that God, who loves me, will take care of me and lead me to the position that is right for me. He knows me better than I do and other than put in dozens of job applications there isn't much else I can do right now. Which is exactly what I have been doing. There is nothing for me to do in the office since summer camp is over and the school year doesn't start for about another month so I have been filling our job applications nonstop.

I have another job interview tomorrow afternoon. I applied to this position a month ago and I had written it off since I hadn't heard from them until now. It would be another Americorp position so it would not pay very well, but I just agreed to live in the MVS house for another year as an associate. This means that I will be a member of the MVS house community and take part in their activities while paying rent instead of working as a volunteer. I know three people who have done this job before and they all said they liked it and that I would be really good at it so I am very hopeful that it will work out.

In other, more fun, news on Saturday our house went to the beach! It was nice to get away and do something different. This also means that I got nothing done over the weekend and my room is a mess not to mention the pile of laundry I need to work on. We had a lot of fun though (despite getting mixed up on the buses in Ocean City and wasting a lot of time and some money). I got a sunburn on my back though so I ended up bringing back a little more than hidden sand.