Guilty Pleasure

Sally is sleeping, my work for the day is done (work for my job, that is—my work is never done), and Sally will be asleep for at least another hour and a half (I hope). I think I’ll take a nap myself.

I must admit that I do feel somewhat guilty having a nap today. The reason why I’m not working now (I usually for 2 hours each day while Sally is napping) is because I hired one of my friends to watch Sally in the morning for 3 hours (which will now occur once a week). I decided that it wouldn’t be too horrible to get a sitter once in a while so I could once again enjoy a bit of down time each day, as I did when I wasn’t working. Despite what I just said, I still feel guilty about it, but I’m not sure why.

I think that 3 hours of playing away from mommy each week will be good for Sally’s social development and will help with the separation anxiety that seems to have gotten worse the last few months. I decided the other day that until I learn to mellow out, Sally probably won’t mellow out (meaning I need to do some mental “letting go” of Sally before she’ll stop freaking out every time I leave her with someone else). Thus came the decision to fork out some money and buy myself some away time.

Sally had a good time today. My friend has a little boy about 6 weeks younger than Sally, and they seem to get along well. She knows him from nursery, and she may remember going to this house once a week when I worked at my old job. Hard to say if she can really remember, but she seemed quite comfortable in the home. So far so good.

My nap is calling. I haven’t been sleeping well lately, and I’m not sure why. It seems that the more tired my body gets, the more active my mind gets. It also doesn’t help that Neal is commonly gone at night now. For all of his hogging of the bed and stealing of covers, I should be sleeping better without him there! Anyhow, I guess I’ll sleep when I can. Like now.

Match Day Results

Neal's graduation is in two days, and I can't believe that med school will be a thing of the past. If only I could say the same for residency...

Match day was two months ago, and I didn't do a great job of letting people know the results. Neal matched at KU for both his preliminary year in internal medicine and for his 3 anesthesiology years, which means we are staying put right here in Kansas City. We are mostly happy about this , but there are some downsides which I will not elaborate on because I don't want to be a whiner. Never mind that KU pays its residents less than almost any other residency program and that the Kansas legislature is trying to decrease their pay...we don't have to sell our house! Never mind that our house is kind of small...we love our ward and the area where we live.

Alright, I wasn't supposed to elaborate, but at least I'm trying to be positive (anyone wanting to hear more of my complaints will have to contact me personally). All-in-all we are really glad to stay here and we are very grateful that Neal matched in a competitive specialty.

Just a quick update on my own job situation: I accepted the job and will be an independent contractor for 1 year, and then will have the option of becoming an employee of the company. I'm starting June 22, and I'm excited.

To Work or Not to Work

That is the question...

I recently received a call from a former co-worker at Quintiles who left the company about a year after I had started there. He wanted me to apply for an opening at his new company, but I passed because it was a full-time position and I am not at all willing to work full-time. He then asked me if he could pass my name along to his brother who works at another company in the same line of work (the statistical programming aspect of clinical trials) but that offers a lot of flexibility. I gave my permission and his brother contacted me a few days later.

I met with the brother today for lunch and learned more about the company and my options for working there. It sounds like a dream come true. If I work there, I can:

choose my own schedule (and it doesn't have to be consistent from week to week)
choose how many hours I work each week
choose if I will work at all on any given day
work at home or in the office
turn down or accept projects that come along depending on my interests

Before I met with this guy he told me that they are looking for someone to work about 10 hours a week on a flexible schedule. That is exactly what I've been thinking that I'd like to do, but I didn't think it was possible.

Over the past several months I've thought a lot about my future job needs/desires/prospects. I worked 20-30 hours a week from home after Sally was born and had a mostly bad experience with it (I was only supposed to work 20, sometimes I did more than 30). It was stressful and not very flexible, and I was frustrated with my manager and co-workers much of the time. The management team had put me in a position that they admitted to me was really supposed to be held by a full-time office-based employee. They overloaded me and while they were apologetic about it, they didn't do much to ease my load. What I did like about it was that I was bringing in some income and keeping up/expanding my skills.

Keeping up my skills and having some avenue for my time and energy outside of what I do at home and church are the main motives for me to go back to work. Salary is somewhat of a factor, but much less so. When I talked to this guy briefly about salary, he asked me what I would ask and then told me that I would get at least quite a bit more than what I had requested.

So...where is the catch? It seems too good to be true. I'm going to have a trial period with this company to see if I want to become an employee, but so far I see nothing bad about it. Some of my former Quintiles peers now work at this company and love it. I'll let everyone know what comes of this opportunity.