It's Been a Long, Loooong Time

I admit it. I've been caving. It's something I always do when life throws me all sorts of curve balls. It's been a weird few weeks, but I'll try to pass along the condensed version.

When my tech writing job with TruGreen ended on Halloween, I was talking with the Microsoft Windows group about a writing job with their User Assistance and Education group. It sounded like a perfect fit for me. They actually contacted me less than two weeks after the announcement came out which is pretty quick for Microsoft. I passed the recruiter screening pretty quickly, then had a one hour conversation with the hiring manager. While I had a great deal of writing experience, I had no MICROSOFT experience. The job turned out to be very different from the one they discribed when I applied, but I still did well enough to get moved ahead to the third level--a phone interview with a team member. If that went well, they'd fly me out for the day-long face-to-face interview.

I really enjoyed talking to the team member and learned a lot about how the Windows writing team works. In fact I was pretty convinced I was in good shape. I sent out some magazine article samples and had Wayne inter office mail some copies of my books to the group only to be told they were going to focus on other candidates.

Yeah, I was pretty grumpy. I really thought I had a chance. But I was also pretty nervous. The next version of Windows is shipping earlier than originally anticipated (this is all public knowledge, so no secrets spilled here, LOL), so the person needed to hit the ground running like mad. They never really said why they decided to look elsewhere, but when I thought back to the conversations, the clues were all there that they really wanted someone with Microsoft experience for the role. It would have been an awesome opportunity, but I feel lucky to have made it as far in the process as I did.

Shortly after all that transpired, a contract technical writing opportunity with Zune, Microsoft's iPod counterpart, opened up. The recruiter was hopeful, but the position was filled before my stuff reached the hiring manager. The manager did supposedly like my background and wanted to keep me in mind for future openings though. Again, close but no cigar. (Where did that phrase come from anyway?)

Then one of my best friends' mom passed away suddenly just before Thanksgiving. Tracy and I exchanged emails/text messages as she and her family rushed back to Sioux Falls from Duluth to be by her mother's side. It caught them so off-guard I'm sure they're still trying to recover from the shock.

While we're far away from Wayne, we saved our pennies and flew out to Seattle for Thanksgiving. More about that in posts to come.

I hope you all enjoyed your holiday, and Tracy, my thoughts and prayers are with you and your family...