I don’t like my job.

Not the writing — I like that part — but I have a day job in corporate America that I used to love. That changed this year when several things happened — they took away our offices and made us use hoteling spaces, they forced us to come back in three days a week, they changed our goals to make them more ambiguous, they cut the operating budget by several million dollars, they require the fucking PRESIDENT OF THE COMPANY to approve any expenditure over $1000… it’s a mess.

So I’ve been looking for a new day job.

And it is exhausting.

I’ve written in the past (but am too lazy to link to posts) about how I only have a certain amount of creative energy in any given day, and a combination of work and job searching is eating it all up. By the time I finish trolling LinkedIn every morning, I’m out of spoons. If I have to go into the office, the commute kills it — mostly because, by the time I get home, I’m so worn out from said commute that all I can do is make dinner and sit on the couch.

Going back into the office has also killed my health — I used to exercise every day, but that time is now commuting time.

I know I’m not the only person in this position. And honestly if we only had to go in twice a week I would be more okay with it. Not fully okay with it, but more okay with it. I’m also not okay with the fact that because our VP is on our floor he wants to see us at our desks, yet the people he manages down on another floor only come in a couple of times a month. It makes me and my team feel like we’re being penalized, when clearly we got our jobs done with no problems for three years from the comfort of our own homes.

I must have created over 200 accounts on Workday, and applied to at least 500 jobs. Occasionally — very occasionally — I’ll get past the AI that scans applications and resumes for keywords and auto-rejects people, and at the time of this writing I’ve had a whopping two external interviews. (I’ve also had a series of internal ones that went nowhere, and a chat with a director that led to a pre-rejection.) I’m very hopeful about one of those external interviews, but we’ll have to wait and see how it goes. Oh, and I had another call with a recruiter for a job that didn’t say it was in-office but the first thing he asked me was: “We’re based in New York City. How do you plan to commute to the office three days a week?” Like, come on, now; put that stuff in the job posting! I was supremely qualified for that role, but if I’d known I’d have to relocate I wouldn’t have applied and wasted both of our time.

I have a self-imposed deadline of Halloween for the holiday stories, but I’m sure I’m not going to make it. Fortunately, I can write them well into next year. I don’t consider that ideal — next year I want to focus on different projects — but one way or the other I’m going to finish them. Even if I have to keep commuting three days a week.

But if you know of a job I might be good for (I work in technical and application support management), I’d love to hear about it. If it’s fully remote, so much the better, because then you’ll get more fiction from me. And isn’t that what we all want?

(Well, it’s what I want, at any rate.)