A brief disclaimer ere beginning... This is not a rant, whining, or any form of woe is me nonsense. This is what happened from when I left California until now... which is fairly awesome, so you needn't worry as you read. This is an effort to include you, grok? Which leads to to a second disclaimer: this be lengthy, so get comfy.
Why did I leave Cali? Mostly due to misplaced trust on my part. First, to a closet alcoholic and later to a back-stabbing manager. Which left me alone and laid off the day after turning 35. Given the cost of living in the Bay with two energetic puppies, I needed to figure something out fast. Finding a job was proving more difficult than I'd anticipated, which after having been laid off was another blow to my professional ego. When it occurred to me the next goal I'd not yet achieved, buying a home, was getting even further out of reach... the decision to leave the state seemed easy.
Why Portland? Had to be an NBA city... on the West coast, so as to not be too far from family. Seattle lost its team, Phoenix is too damn hot, and I wasn't leaving Redwood City for Sacramento... which left Portland or Denver. Knowing nothing about Denver, but a little about Portland sent me in the right direction. That my future wife was moving there as well certainly didn't hurt, but I wasn't going to move because of a woman again, the quality of this one notwithstanding. Investigation left my ears ringing with endorsements about what a great town Portland is... which has been proven true again and again in countless ways since. A plane flight, job interview, and offer in hand, I made the decision.
I'm bare-bonesing it a bit here so as to not focus too much on the pre-Oregon past, but rather to provide some context as to who I was when I came to Portland. Damaged would be a good way to put it. I'd thought I'd figured out the relationship thing, but not even close. I'd stumbled into my dream job at an iconic company... and they don't exist anymore. All geekiness aside, this was the 12th-oldest internet domain ever registered. Now it routes to Oracraple. This still makes me cry. Damaged and bitter might be more accurate. I had worked so hard and felt further from my goals than ever. But it gets better... kindasorteventually...
April 2010... The job started out well, the relationship with Bella even better, and I settled into Portland with much less upset than I'd anticipated. I invested in Portland... all of it... the job, the lifestyle, the character of it. I asked Bella to move in and thought to myself: 'Finally, things are going right!' Famous. Last. Words.
December 2010... I pushed myself too hard to meet a ridiculous deadline at work and discovered I was managed by Bill Lumbergh. Given my relative fragility when I moved here... which in hindsight I'd considerably overestimated... it was a bit more than I could handle. And the pain that had been a companion for so long... blossomed. Every part of my body hurt. This had happened every so often when I overdid things, usually working too much and not sleeping enough. But now it was every day. And thus began my journey to discover that I'm a unicorn. No kidding. A f***ing unicorn.
February 2011... Bella's doctor, a naturopath who succeeded in helping where so many others had not, started to poke and prod and run tests on me, to no avail. She told me that most people who come to her have easily identifiable symptoms... horses. Others come in and she has to delve a little deeper to diagnose... zebras. So I asked: 'That makes me a unicorn, no?' When she stopped laughing, I got sufficient agreement to back the aforementioned claim.
April 2011... The diagnosis: fibromyalgia. The upside: finally knowing I wasn't crazy to think something was legitimately wrong with me. The downside: knowing something was legitimately wrong with me. For those who found out about this and/or its severity at the Phoenix wedding, I apologize. It's on me to be more available, which is part of why I'm writing this entry. It's an area where I have a long and storied tradition of epically sucking, which is part of why I'm writing this entry. Many birds dying with this stone...
May 2011... Avoiding stress is really the only "cure", but seeing as I'm alive that doesn't seem an available option. Lessening stress, on the other hand, is much more viable. Moving somewhere ants didn't invade daily would definitely help... so we moved. Not a huge improvement, but enough that we settled in. A little red flag went up when our new landlord tried to rope us in to a 2-year lease, but the place fit our needs and I really wanted out of our current place. Nothing stressful about moving...
August 2011... The diagnosis also meant finding another job was a priority. Never before had I seriously considered taking contract work. The uncertainty, repetitive interviewing, and lack of health insurance made the option distinctly unappealing. Nonetheless, I took a contract position with a large shoe company and quickly realized I'd made a mistake. Took over a week to get a computer, over two weeks to get a badge allowing me access to the building. And I was surrounded by piranha. Me, not so much piranha as one of the fish swimming in the school to appear as a much bigger fish to intimidate predators. Collaborative gestalt is my general goal and they ate me alive. But I couldn't quit yet...
September 2011... The house into which we moved? Scheduled to go up for sale at a foreclosure auction in December. The landlord? Wouldn't take our calls. Took the rent, but otherwise disappeared. Bella did some investigation, in what's become a common and invaluable theme, discovered we had some options. Like voiding our lease when next we moved because the landlord had committed fraud by not acknowledging the impending foreclosure. That said, I hate moving. And frankly, given the severity of my FM, I couldn't do it myself anymore. Paying a couple of Bella's coworkers solved that problem, but to where we moved was undetermined.
October 2011... Without belaboring the discussion that ensued, we decided it was time to buy a house. The market was still bottoming out and I had a contract-rate inflated income with which to swing a mortgage. Our same doctor pointed us to a fantastic realtor, who found what would become our home fairly quickly. Staying in my current position was becoming increasingly untenable, but if I'd changed jobs in the middle of escrow we might've lost the house. So endure I must...
November 2011... A week after escrow closed, I walked out of the job. My intent was to return the next morning to gather my things and give notice. I'd had enough condescension from one of the piranha and didn't think I could give notice calmly. I got a call that evening to inform me my contract had been terminated. But the house was still ours...
December 10, 2011... Oh, and we were getting married. A small, casual affair in Bella's aunts' home, officiated by a family friend. Definitively Portland, which I've started using as an adjective when I lack the proper superlative to describe how cool this city is. We decided it was easier to do all the paperwork in state, hence the smaller (local) ceremony...
December 11, 2011... So escrow closed a month ago, but since the owners hadn't yet found a house themselves, we couldn't move in until... the day after our Portland wedding. How's that for a honeymoon? That's right, ladies... swoon away. But before we could finish sorting our boxes, much less unpack them, we were on our way to Phoenix...
December 30, 2011... Did I mention that we were planning our wedding? Sorry... weddings. Plural. One in Portland, one in Phoenix. We had people here, in LA, and in Phoenix/Tucson/Sonoita... sue us, we're popular. The one in Phoenix was simply awesome. Allow me a brief tangent...
There was a moment during the Phoenix ceremony, after we were pronounced and began to walk down the aisle. And you cheered... The moment was already perfect, for obvious reasons, but the cheering... Thinking about it still makes me cry... It's one thing to have a sturdy faith in the love of family and friends... It's another thing entirely to know it. To be enveloped by it, like thunder rumbling directly overhead (or in this case, from my left). That's the only way I can think to describe the emotional impact of that moment. Nor will I ever have the words adequate to express my gratitude at having the quality of people in our lives to create such a moment.
January 2012... Some of these things were clearly fantastic, others decidedly less so... the point being they were all significant in their own way and required major adjustments. I decided for the first time, since graduating college, to not work. Some time off seemed necessary and the job market was only too happy to comply, as I was leaving for my honeymoon in a few weeks...
February, 2012... New Orleans is a great city. It's also the furthest east I've ever been. I didn't handle it very well. This was our honeymoon and Bella's birthday vacation she'd been planning for how long and I sprinkled anxiety attacks liberally throughout. In hindsight, I marvel she didn't ask for an annulment. Instead, she helped me (and us) to take a huge step forward. I said it'd become a common theme, but more on that later.
March, 2012... I started a new contract at a company in the automotive industry. Everyone seemed nice, there was a dev lead from whom I could learn, and I was told multiple times that I would've been hired full-time had it been an option. I settled in and started to learn the business. I got excited seeing commercials on TV for one of your prospective clients. It seemed I'd finally found a good fit professionally.
May, 2012... After months of discussion and research, Bella and I agreed that it was extremely likely that I have Asperger's syndrome (AS). It's a mild form of autism and explains so much of how I experience life. I won't belabor the difficulties, as it's not that kind of blog (really!), but it's been revelatory just how impactful it is on my life. Admittedly, to date I've not yet acquired an official diagnosis, but the alternative is that I'm crazy. No joke. Nucking futs. I'm going with AS...
July, 2012... After several negative encounters with a coworker, I sent a transcript of an IM chat we'd had to our manager. Having been dinged in the past for less than ideal personal interactions, I'm acutely aware of what is and is not ok to say in any given situation. When a coworker finds a bug and tells me to not be careless and put more effort into my work, I'm fairly confident that's not ok. My manager's response: "I don't see anything wrong with that... It looks like he was trying to be helpful." This was so far outside the realm of my expectations, I had a meltdown. Think a seven year old throwing a tantrum. It's an AS thing and having recognized it's onset, I excused myself and left. A couple conversations with useless manger later, assuring him I would adjust, I thought the matter had been handled and closed.
August, 2012... More research indicated that tricyclic antidepressants had proven effective with AS, for whom severe anxiety is prevalent into our 30s. I was wary as I'd heard some disheartening things about antidepressants, the least of which was mental fuzziness. Started taking them on a Friday night... and completely sidestepped what otherwise would have been a meltdown on Sunday morning. It's been night and day different in the best way. I don't react to things nearly as much as I had been and it's really helped me feel much more on an even keel. It's possible I did not include enough superlatives in that last sentence. I still have meltdowns on occasion, but they're less severe and don't last nearly as long. As an aside, I asked Bella to help me remember when I started taking them just now. Her response: "Not soon enough".
September, 2012... As my contract expires, I go find my manager to start the conversation about converting to full-time. He tells me that he has concerns I may be a "problem employee" and wants to extend my contract another month until he was satisfied that wasn't the case. I learned he didn't consider the issue with the coworker closed. The appropriate term here is blindsided...
October, 2012... After training my replacement, I'm let go because the company is "going in a different direction". After having two jobs in the first 10 years of my career, I'd now been terminated three times in the last three years. Liars 2, Piranha 1, Kevan 0. Professional confidence brimming...
November, 2012... I started a new contract this month. It's with a company at which I interviewed a year ago, but though it was mutually considered a good fit, they didn't have the work at the time. When I asked my staffing firm to ping them again, they made it clear they "weren't going to lose [me] again." Converting has already been discussed, but it's more that I was made more welcome in my first week than in any job before. I'm trying not to get too excited, as not only was I handed meaningful work right off the bat but also the authority to decide how to implement it. Can I get a hazaa?!
A quick recap...
- April 2010... Moved out of state, started new relationship and new job
- December 2010... Chronic pain goes into daily syndication
- April 2011... Diagnosed with incurable, chronic pain condition
- May 2011... Moved again
- August 2011... Quit one crappy job for another
- September 2011... Learned the house we'd rented would be sold in three months
- November 2011... Bought a house and fired from job
- December 2011... Got married, moved, flew to Phoenix and got married again
- February 2012... Traveled further from home than ever...
- March 2012... Started third job in less than two years
- May 2012... Determined I'm on the autism spectrum
- August 2012... Took medication with potential of compromising my one employable skill
- October 2012... Fired from third job
- November 2012... Started another new job
I'm not completely sure how I'm still kicking after all that, but I'm pretty sure it has to do with a compulsion for tenacity and my wife. I likely owe some exposition on some of the topics I threw out above in rapid succession. It will come in time. Right now, life's about developing stabilizing routines and doing right by my wife... which is about as much as I can handle right now. That means I still won't call... the AS makes it hard to talk on the phone. There are some things, however, you should know if you're reading this... assuming you're not some random stranger with nothing better to do.
November 14, 2012... Finally posting this novel after half a dozen sittings. Wanting to focus on the positivity I promised at the beginning of this diatribe. These are the things you should know, regardless of how often (or not) you hear me say them:
You're in my life because I love you a ridiculous amount.
You're in my life because you've helped shape me, into a man who faces these hurdles and knows they won't really stop me from achieving what I set out to do.
You're in my life because you've shown me how to believe in myself.
You're in my life because I cannae say thank you enough. Ever.
My life is full because you're in it.
Thank you.
I love you.
brat
Hazaa!
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