the calm before the (very welcome) storm

Forget the added income; forget the ability to guiltlessly add clothes to your wardrobe (although that is good), surely the best part about getting a job is the time before you start. For some unlucky people they have only a weekend, most have a week or two, I, however, was given over a month. And I'm just about in the middle of it.

What am I doing with my month? Not much. Sleeping in till a whopping 9am, lingering over the paper, taking a cup of tea to the computer, spending hours wrapped up in a good vampire story, wandering aimlessly around the apartment. Mostly I'm catching up on all the relaxing that I didn't do while looking for a job.

Since August, when I handed in the thesis I had been working on and started the full-time job search, I've had plenty of ostensibly free time. But as anyone who's been unemployed knows, that free time is impossible to enjoy when it is the very thing you are trying to put a stop to.

I tried not to write too much about my job search here, partly from pride, partly from lack of things to say. Partly because I was afraid you'd think I was a spoiled brat for not being willing to take any job at all. Oh how I wanted to tell you that I had been headhunted by Pizza Hut but that would have also required me telling you that I turned them down--and what would you have thought of me then? So although I didn't discuss every phone call I received, every frantic search for an interview outfit, loyal readers could suss out the facts from a few frustrated posts. I wanted a job and was having a hard time finding one.

I desperately wanted a job; I was stressed out and at times depressed, but I didn't even grasp myself how much these feelings were ruling my life. The first day that I walked through town after getting this job, I think I must have measured a few inches taller, my expression more confident. I experienced a feeling of belonging to the world, of having earned the right to buy that last Christmas present that I hadn't even known I was missing. I realized that for the last two years or so, I had more or less been shuffling on the outside of Swedish society, loving it and exploring it, but somehow not a real part of it. And then, in the space of a phone call, taken on the side of the road, that feeling evaporated and the backpack of guilt and confusion I had been carrying around was left on the sidewalk as I biked away, sporting the world's goofiest grin.

So what is this job I got anyway? Well, I'm not sure how much to say. The dangers of blogging about one's job are well-documented and I intend to avoid doing so--at least specifically. What I'll say is this: I am overjoyed at getting it, but it is not perfect. It involves a long commute; it won't enable me to set up a college fund or buy tickets to China anytime soon; it is more corporate than I would have planned; and it is only temporary. But there are so many good things. I will get to write and edit; my job will be performed in English but I will have the chance to speak Swedish with colleagues (exactly what I wanted); the environment is creative, young, and friendly; and at the end of the contract I will have the possibility of moving into a different job, which is a little more dreamy.

I had planned to write the whole long story about how I got it, but I got bored halfway through and am sure you would have felt the same. Let me say this: getting the job was the culmination of months of trying to charm and convincingly argue my way in. At this one company, I have been in touch with nine different people, about six different jobs, and have had five interviews. My first interview for the job I eventually got began thusly: "Well, you're pretty persistent aren't you?"

Honestly, I didn't think so. I've never been good at ass kissing and prostrating, which is why I made the world's worst intern. But then again, things change when you're beginning to feel desperate. If something didn't happen soon, major things would have needed to be re-thought. My apartment, my social life, my city, my life with Erik--these were things I wasn't interested in re-thinking right now.

But I didn't tell him that. I just smiled and said yes, I guess I am persistent. "It's good," he said. "That's why you're sitting here. We like persistence." One take-home assignment and one interview later, I was employed--or soon to be.

And now, I have to go. It's time to meet Erik on the couch, for some reading or TV watching, or game playing, or talking. For the next few weeks I will try to be persistently lazy. Everything is going to change so soon.