So in my last entry, I said my job situation hadn’t changed this year. Well, guess what, I’ve changed that too – I started a new job this week!
I wish I could say it was entirely by choice. An unexpected financial emergency blindsided me in early September (which is thankfully resolving itself by this point), and I decided that it wouldn’t hurt to start expanding the pool of jobs I was applying for as one possible method of working my way out of it. The very first job I decided to apply to was a position with an insurance company in Chattanooga where I made it to the second interview in 2019, but did not get the job. I found the same position again, and figured if I made it that close four years ago, I certainly had a decent chance now based on all the additional experience I’d gathered since then. This intuition turned out to be exactly right, and now I’m starting a job there.
Lots of changes are coming. The biggest by far is that I will now be working a full 5-day, 40-hour-a-week schedule, and two of those days will be in office and the rest from home. I hadn’t worked for any jobs in person since 2018 before this week. Two perks of this particular job are that the training process is lengthy and I have 15 other people training with me. I won’t be expected to make any difficult work decisions right away, and I’ll have the support of many other people who are in the same boat as me. This is good because making those adjustments will be a challenge. I’ve gotten very used to working at home in my pajamas on whatever schedule I want, and now I will need to be hypervigilant about being ready to work at 8 a.m. each day. But at least the work environment is a good one.
Because of my new work obligations, I have decided to take a few month break from the autism center just to clear up some space in my schedule and brain, and that has been hard. I am hoping to come back once I am more adjusted to the role. I am also needing to change my daily schedule to go to bed earlier in preparation for being up earlier. I am learning about what corporate life is like using two and three monitors, and learning how to use a slew of new technology. But everyone at work seems incredibly nice, willing to help, and always up to answer whatever questions they get asked, and I feel grateful for that.
I will certainly keep the blog updated if more interesting things happen at the job, as right now I am only one week in. But in closing, I wanted to touch on the importance of confidence. In order to get this job, I had to survive a 3-interview process, the last interview of which was on Zoom and I had to dress up for. I’ve always struggled with interviews before, but for some reason, this process felt easier. While I haven’t explicitly practiced interviewing, I think my time with the autism center and my time building friendships and doing activities at church has made it easier to talk more confidently about myself and my accomplishments. I’m still autistic and I still do things that are just a little bit off to neurotypicals, I’m sure. But because I have forced myself to keep talking and doing new things, it made everything easier and I can now talk in a way that everyone understands. And thankfully because I have surrounded myself with supportive people in my life, my confidence has grown. The responsibilities and salary of this job are certainly well beyond any opportunity I’ve had before, and I’m excited to take them on and see what comes next.
uniqueperspective7 