24 Hours Later

| posted in: life 


Yesterday, the 25th, about this time I got the call I’ve been waiting to get for ten weeks. An offer. The written offer is in an overnight pouch scheduled to be here tomorrow.

All through the evening and through most of the night I was a little unhinged by the culmination of physical exhaustion, mental weariness, and emotional battering I have undergone getting to this point. I see-sawed back and forth between wanting to accept the offer and wanting to curl up and die. I know that my conversations with Michele were rambling, disconnected childish attempts and making this whole situation about everyone else.

Today I am back to my normal self. Starting this morning I outlined several points I needed to clarify with new company. The biggest sticking point was the start date. Yesterday I felt very pressured to start as soon as possible, June 7th at the latest. This left us with less than two weeks to find a new place, pack, move, get settled in, list our current home for sale, et cetera. It felt extremely good to be able to negotiate a later starting date, June 28th, and to get my other questions answered. I felt in control of my own life once again.

We’ve taken some time to explore apartment offerings in the metropolitan area, and have made appointments for next Wednesday to visit a couple that we like. Having the extra two weeks of time just makes the pace of this transition more to our liking, and I finally feel excited about this opportunity.

My other options are continuing to move ahead as well. I started the day with one offer in hand, and one possible contract in the works. This afternoon I still have the offer in hand, but I’ve added a second local contract and started the ball rolling on a position outside Louisville Kentucky.

Obviously Michele and I would prefer to stay here and keep our home and our pool for another year or three. And should an offer that makes that possible occur within the next 3-4 weeks we’ll take it. If such an offer doesn’t materialize in that time frame we have a great job in a city we could learn to appreciate waiting for us.

I think that I will sleep better tonight than I have since March.

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Mark H. Nichols

I am a husband, cellist, code prole, nerd, technologist, and all around good guy living and working in fly-over country. You should follow me on Mastodon.