On September 1, 2008 I took a trip to Austin to interview for a job. This was not an unusual occurence. I had applied for other jobs prior to this one, and even been out of town for a few interviews. But, I did seem to have an unusually optimistic feeling about this one.
Even though it was a four and a half hour drive home, I was back at work the next morning. Most people didn’t even realize I had been gone. I was grinding my way through e-mail and voice mail after the three day weekend when my phone rang. Less than 24 hours after the interview, I was offered the job. And, they wanted me to start October 6.
This meant we had one month to pack up everything we owned, sell our house, and find a place to live 300 miles away. I hadn’t even told my boss that I interviewed for the job yet, and now I had to tell him that I was leaving. That made for an interesting conversation later that afternoon.
My wife and I spent the rest of the week cleaning up the house and working on the yard. We also starting packing in preparation for the move and gathering up things to sell in a garage sale.
On September 10, the realtor put the “For Sale” sign up in our front yard. The next day, we received an offer on the house for our full asking price. (Housing bubble? What housing bubble?) The buyer wanted us out as soon as possible. We agreed to be out by the end of the month.
That weekend we had our big moving sale. We were hoping to attract potential buyers to the house by having a moving sale with the for sale sign out front, but I didn’t mind that it had already sold.
I spent my days furiously documenting and organizing things at work. I developed a Google site to document everything I knew about the network. I backed up everything on my computer and reloaded the OS. I filed what seemed like years worth of paper work and filled a bookshelf with binders.
One of the last things I did was take down the degrees and photos that I had on the walls of my office. I still remember one of my coworkers had to leave the room while I did that. I have a lot of good friends back in Paris and I still miss them and think about them every day.
On September 20, we took another trip to Austin to look at apartments. We had spent the last week researching online. We narrowed our search down to two different apartment complexes. We picked the one we liked and put down the deposit the same day.
The next weekend we loaded up the biggest moving truck you can rent and with the help of my mom and step-dad moved to Austin. We spent the next 7 days learning our way around Austin and the following Monday I started my new job with the Texas Education Agency.
It has been really hard on the ones you left behind. Personally and professionally I still feel a little lost. Who else knew me well enough to listen and be understanding through my ranting and raving about problems at school? You were there to listen after every nasty breakup with some fool I’d been dating. You always had a solution……..introducing me to Ben was your biggest success.
I am glad that you, Paige and Matthew are happy, but I still miss you all.
I’m so glad that this is working out for you. I definitely miss you but even long distance you continue to encourage me. That’s a gift – to be an encourager. You leave things a little better than you found them. Enough mushy stuff LOL. You should post more often so we won’t save all this up for one comment!
I’ve been gone for six months so I figure it’s OK to talk about it now. Expect a few more posts about why I left and what I’m up to these days.
Helping and encouraging other people has a positive effect on me, too. It makes me feel good to know that I’ve influenced the lives of others.
It’s so good to hear your voice again. I miss you. I miss your calm way of listening and telling me what to do to fix whatever was going haywire. I’m glad you didn’t hang up on me all those times I called and yelled my frustration. Austin is a better place because you are there, but we really miss you around here.