The new job is wonderful, though most days I think my brain is going to explode from all the things there are to learn. That’s the good part. The bad part is where I started at the same time as the pay period began, so I haven’t gotten paid yet. I’m pushing 4 weeks without a pay check. Come the end of the week, things will be fine, but until then, I’m pretty much broke. I used my last $30 dollars to fill the tank on my truck. I have enough gas for the week, but grocery shopping is pretty well out.
The money thing always leaves me so damn stressed. It should all be okay soon, but in the meanwhile, I feel like there’s steel cable where all the muscles should be in my shoulders. It’s not a great feeling.
But I do love my job, though you wouldn’t always know it. I have to keep myself from getting too grumpy at work a lot. It’s hard to explain, but it comes from being constantly challenged and trying to figure things out. When I’m in the process, I’m grumpy, occasionally snippy, and if I’m really good and distracted, I talk outloud/to myself, usually in the hallways. Oops. The catch is, I love it. I love having to figure things out. I love how it feels when I have figured something out. I love that what I’m doing matters, and not just in an intellectual curiosity way. You wouldn’t necessarily know it by the grumpy thing at work, but it really is a good thing. What’s that line from Steel Magnolias? “I’m not pissed off, I’ve just been in a really bad mood for the last 20 years.”
The most amazing thing to me is to see all these people that I work with, and literally half of them are employed there to help maintain the labs and the supplies for the research. And half the people doing research are bogged down in processing clinical trials for the FDA. And I got a position doing pure medical research. Not for a drug, not to supply the lab, just to further the understanding of autoimmune diseases. There is no way I can describe my life as anything but blessed.
And I’ll just keep reminding myself of that fact until I finally can afford the damn groceries again.