Floods, famine, and hope.

I went on a job interview yesterday. The opportunity came out of the blue, via a Facebook IM conversation. About 10 days ago, a friend that is the public relations manager at a local legal professional organization mentioned to me that that her assistant had just quit, and she was now scrambling to find a replacement. She is familiar with my situation, in part because she is involved in the local theatre scene here in Rochester, and helps with PR for another theatre company in town. In the course of the conversation, I asked if she wouldn't mind looking at my resume, and consider it as part of her search process.

She was concerned that the job would be a bit boring for me, as there was not a ton of writing, and that the salary was not in line with what I might expect. She felt that I was far more advanced in terms of experience than what the position called for. I pointed out that I have been looking for a way to break into the PR world full-time, and that this type of entry level position could be just what I needed. She said to send her the resume, and I did, not knowing what would come out of it.

Well, on Wed. I got an e-mail from her, asking if I could come in for an interview on Friday. Of course I said yes, and started to prep for it, visiting the website of the organization and learning all I could about it. This has been the best opportunity to come along in quite some time. Being a realist, I know there are never any guarantees, but I wanted to make the best showing I could.

Of course, things are never smooth, and Thursday night, just before Mrs. Nighttime and I were to head to our theatre for rehearsal (we're both in a play there, opening a week from today), we come back home to find that the water heater has blown. Half the basement was flooded, so we cut the water off and started manning the bilge pumps. (Translation - We broke out the mops and the shop vac, and poured the excess down the sump.) Mrs. Nighttime got on the horn to someone she kn0ws, an HVAC technician that services her building. He was able to get us a new water heater, and now 24 hours later we have hot water again.

When this happened though, it jarred me some. I got really snippy, and I knew it was that "Oh, no. I don't need this shit, not now." feeling. The other thing that concerned me was, how was I going to take a shower Friday morning? All I can say it's a good thing we're on good terms with our neighbors, at least the ones we know pretty well. The ones' down the block, whose home caught fire last year, came to our rescue and let me use their shower in the morning.

Making extra copies of my resume, I went downtown for the interview, and while heading there, I realized how I needed to get over the nervousness that was running rampant inside of me. It's amazing; I can go up on stage in front of 200 people, and be far less nervous than sitting across the conference room table from one person. I took a idea from an acting exercise called an "as if," and simply put it in my mind that I was not really at an interview at all. I was simply sitting down and having a talk with a friend.

It worked like a charm. The interview went very well, at least in my opinion, and I think I was able to convey what I wanted to achieve by working in this position. I stressed the idea that, even though the pay is lower than I would like, the possibility of acquiring new and needed skills (especially working with graphics programs, something I don't really do, since we farm out all our graphics work at my theatre), combined with the opportunity to finally work full-time in the PR world was worth not being concerned about the lower pay scale. I also stressed that this was something that I thought long and hard about, and it was not a "I need a job at any cost!" type of situation. I should know something hopefully by the middle of next month. As you can imagine, they were inundated with resumes, especially in this job market.

So, cross your fingers, toes, and whatever else you feel might be appropriate in this situation. The famine that has been my job search, I am hoping, has come to an end. If this comes through, you will probably hear my screams of joy across the country and beyond.