I’m still anxiously waiting for any news on from the recruiting agency about the digital agency in San Diego.  I should probably email the lady back and ask about that.  Somehow, I feel like my chances are slowly slipping with each day that passes.  I didn’t expect this much pessimism so soon in my job search.

The rest of Tuesday was pretty fantastic though.  I met up with my friend from college and got lunch with him.  Then, while driving through campus after having dropped him off, I drove by my old work.  I then made the split-second decision to actually turn around to go in and visit my old boss/mentor.  There are some people who you’re just extremely grateful you know, and my old boss and another lady that I worked with are two of those people.  Needless to say, I was very happy to see her in her office because she sometimes works in another office on campus.  Again, it was strange how not much seemed to change– the whole office, walking through the building to get to my old area, sitting in the chair in front of my old boss’s desk and talking to her– it seemed so fresh in my mind.  And like always, they offered to help if possible, along with a few motivational words.  For some reason, it sounds so much more sincere coming from them.

At night, I went with a friend to a Wilco concert.  Wasn’t the funnest concert I’ve been to, but musically speaking, it was pretty damn good.  And for once, the sound mixing was excellent.  They didn’t turn the volume up to deafening levels, and I could actually hear not only the vocals extremely well, but also the intricacies of every instrument.  Finally!  A fucking concert where I could actually appreciate the live sound and performance.  Unfortunately, our high ended right before Wilco went on, so that was a huge bummer.  We saw people lighting up in the pit below, and I was very let down that I couldn’t join.  But at least the concert was good, even though there was a chick near us who was fucking annoying as hell.  Jeff Tweedy did some banter with the audience and said “pussy” on stage, so I’m very happy that they tried to sound like they were having a good time.

Fast forward to today when I hung out with some friends from my certificate class I took.  We went to some pretty hip bar in Downtown Santa Ana for dinner.  It was actually pretty nice, albeit on the expensive side.  The waitresses there are pretty attractive though.  I’ll have to take my friends there some day and go bar hopping.  Along with some career advice, we discussed the possibility of opening a coloft which got me kind of excited.  I’ve always wanted to invest in a side business and I know that one of them wants to as well, and this idea might actually be feasible.  We would either rent or buy a space, dress it up into a bunch of little offices, and then rent it out to people who need a place to work and hold meetings and stuff if they don’t have their own.  There’s a few of these in Los Angeles and from what they tell me, there’s one in Fullerton too, and it seems to work at those places.  But there’s none in the main Orange County vicinity.  It would be so awesome to own a shared space and be able to go there at night with a few friends, or hold parties, or just go there alone if I wanted some legitimate private time.  Clearly this is just an idea at this point, but we’ll see how far it can go.  The friends I discussed this with are older, have more money than me, and are extremely hard working, so I’m sure if they are serious about this and we find that there’s actually a decent demand for it, then I’m sure they’ll try to see it through.

I have begun my job search, just as I promised to myself I would do after I got back from my vacation.  I’m happy to report that it’s coming along somewhat decently.  Not as much “bites” as I would have hoped, but there have been some definite maybes in there.  I’ve pondered this while I was in Italy–whether or not to find a job in Orange County or in LA, or if I should search for ones in cities I would be interested in living in such as NYC, Boston, or Seattle–and I never really was able to think through to a solution.  When I finally started my full on job search, I found my self involuntarily searching outside my vicinity, so I suppose that answered itself.  If the chance presented itself then I would move.  Seems like the chance might present itself in a county near and dear to my heart- San Diego.

I applied to a job at a small company for the hell of it, mostly to hit a non-existent quota just to say I applied to a few jobs that day so I wouldn’t feel guilty before bed.  I was a little surprised that they responded and actually wanted to meet with me.  I’m a little uncertain as to whether or not I would accept the job if I got offered it though.  Sadly, I’ve grown extremely complacent with where I am in terms of living situation and proximity to friends and family.  This makes me unsure if I would want to move back down to San Diego because I also have a bit of the “been there, done that” mentality.  I was still unsure about it when a recruiting agency that I applied for a different job from, called me in to meet with them.  I went in and met with one of the people there who told me about another job in San Diego for this cool digital agency.  She really worked the company up, and upon further research, it really does looks like an awesome place to work, right in Downtown San Diego, literally right next to/overlooking Petco Park.  The job description, although written for a senior level person, still seems like it fits me wonderfully were it written for a junior level person.  But she assured me they were looking for a few junior people to expand their UX team, so I’m hopeful.  With this company, I’m feeling like this juice is worth the squeeze, and relocating for this job wouldn’t be so bad because I’ll hopefully be making more cheese in the typical entry level range.  I’m just unsure how to approach this situation if I happen to get a job offer from the small company, and then the agency lets me do an interview that’s another week away.  How would I tell the small company to “wait while I see if this cooler company will hire me”?

Of course, this is assuming I charm the pants off both parties, and everything goes perfectly.  But according to my parents, this is a bad year for people with the dragon zodiac sign (i.e. me), so that’s very reassuring.  I just keep fantasizing about how awesome it’ll be when I leave my current company, and all the different ways I wish I could express my contempt to the lot of douche bags, dumb asses, and pricks in my department through my farewell email (I want to upload the clip from Office Space where Jennifer Aniston’s coworker sees her and Peter kiss in the parking lot and flips them off, onto Youtube and put that link in my email).  And I imagine how cool it would be to finally not give a damn about someone finding out I trashed the fucking ping pong table next to our cubes and actually vandalizing it by either super gluing a bucket of ping pong balls onto the table, or super gluing cardboard from corner to corner, all over the table so that the ping pong ball won’t bounce anymore.  None of that glamorous stuff will happen though, of course.  I’ll likely be polite and sound like a pushover, but who cares; I’ll just be happy to get out of that soul sucking job.

• Meeting people was the highlight of the trip.  Doesn’t really matter what we ended up doing.  All I knew was that I wasn’t alone for as long as they were there, and that we were about as chummy as strangers could be.
• I wish people here at home are as approachable as they are in hostels.
• New Year’s countdown in a different country with your in-the-moment friends is so much fun.  I want to do this for at least a couple more years.
• It’s cool to be able to leave your new friends in one city, and then see them again a few days later in the same hostel as you.
• Americans got it easy in terms of language.
• Americans suck major wang when it comes to travel.  Australians, on the other hand, are just about taking over the world with their travelers.
• Not planning out your time in a city is so awesome.  At the same time, it’s a bad idea since you manage to waste days and not actually see any of the popular things out of sheer laziness and wanting to exercise aforementioned freedom while tourists are scrambling around or bound to long-ass lines.
• Alcohol is the universal social lubricant.  Just be sure they drink as much as you do…
• Europeans are 20x more attractive than Americans.  Let’s be honest here, the ratio of ugly:attractive in the US is probably 6:1.  There, it’s about 1:10.  They practically have supermodels riding around on mopeds.
• Public transportation is so good over there.
• The other popular question:  How was the food over there?  Not over-seasoned like it is here, but oh so damn good.

Coming back though, even though I was only gone for two weeks, I feel like so much has changed.  But I noticed that nothing has changed.  Everything is the same, like home is a constant.  It seems that the more adventures, experiences, life, etcetera, that you cram into a small amount of time (“small amount of time” is pretty relative; could be years, could be days), the more you yourself feel like you’ve changed, and you imagine that the world around you changes at the same pace too.  But everything you return home to doesn’t seem to have moved much.  It really is one of the oddest mental sensations you can possibly feel.  The same thing happened when I moved back home after college.  And I’m pretty sure it’ll be like that when I visit Italy again.  It’ll be like I was just there a few days ago because I’ll have had such vivid memories of it, and nothing will have changed so significantly that I couldn’t recognize it.  But even if it did, the feeling of being there will be the same.

This year, in no particular order, I

1. got my wisdom teeth removed.
2. went to Vegas with my friends.
3. started smoking more weed than I think is good for me.
4. focused a lot on my impending career change.
5. worked my first full-time job for a whole year.
6. decided to plan a trip to Italy and will actually go.
7. played guitar horribly at my friend’s wedding.
8. quit Facebook.
9. ran my first marathon in miserable weather.
10. bought a new acoustic guitar.
11. did a lot more maturing.

By far, the biggest focus this year was work life and my career.  It seemed like a lot of what I did was to benefit myself professionally.  I think I distanced myself from all my friends even more because of it.  It’s ok though because my friends are all busy with their own lives, and I’d just be wasting my time if all I did was wait for someone to be free to play.  With that said, I think this year’s focus will carry over well into next year.

Next year, I plan to

1. switch to a job that pays me more to do what I want to do, so I can bitch about work that at least interests me.
2. hang out with my friends more.
3. be more outgoing.
4. plan another extensive trip abroad, perhaps around Christmas time-New Year’s Eve/Day.
5. save more money, and max out my Roth contribution limit.
6. go to a Wilco concert in January! and go to more concerts in general.
7. be more healthy, physically and mentally.
8. get more comfortable on the surfboard.
9. maaaaaaybe get a road bike.
10. start being more in-the-know on music again.
11. make 2012 more memorable than 2011.
12. try harder.

I’m not feeling all that inspired this year.  Perhaps it’s because I’m writing my New Year reflection post about 9 days in advance that I’m not feeling the optimism that seems to permeate the air around December 30-31.  I won’t be on a computer when the clock strikes 12 on January 1.  I won’t even be in the same time-zone I’ve experienced New Year’s Eve on for the past 23 years of my life.  Maybe that’s how it should be though:  a symbolic gesture that the start of a new year in a completely different setting out of my comfort zone is a metaphor for a start of different life with me more in control.  You know, some bullshit like that.  Here is to hoping that the me in exactly one year will re-read all of 2012′s posts and look back on it with a longer list of memorable events.  Happy Holidays.

I find her so incredibly attractive.  Points of attraction:  her eyes and her smile (and her red hair doesn’t hurt).  Her gaze and her light smile is strangely soothing.  Additionally, though you can’t really tell by this picture, her lack of make-up–or very light use of it–is the other thing I find attractive, particularly her lack of eyeliner, mascara, and eyeshadow.

One of the very, very few times I’m posting a picture on my blog, only because I’ve been obsessing over her since I began re-watching Mad Men with the commentary on.

It’s not at all unusual for me to space out all the time, and I’m actually very used to it.  So much so, I kind of know what to anticipate in terms of thought process and physical sensation.  But lately, I’ve been finding myself really, really spacing out at random times.  I liken the sensation to a deep meditative state, or the feeling you get when you’re just about to step over from fully awake to fully asleep, right on the cusp of losing consciousness.  Clearly this is not good because this happens a lot at work and in meetings at work where I should probably be paying attention, and while I’m driving.  The driving bit scares me the most since I kind of let it happen.  Just yesterday, I could totally tell my reaction time was like a geriatric trying to play Whack-A-Mole.  Of course it didn’t help that I was driving home in the rain, at night, in stop and go traffic, with Radiohead’s Pyramid Song playing in the background.  I probably came about a foot and a half between the car in front of me for about 5 minutes before I snapped out of it and traffic started moving again.

After a few weeks of trying to get back into running only to tire out after about half a mile, I figure it was time to fix my technique. Lo and behold, taking out the extra arch support insole and religiously avoiding heel strikes made a world of difference–I found my rhythm before tiring out, hah.

So my advice to anyone of you struggling with your running: land on the ball of your feet! Those trendy Vibram Five Finger shoes get rave reviews because it forces people to relearn how to run; they can no longer land on their heels because they would injure themselves if they did. Thus, no heel strikes means more fluid running, which means less injuries and less effort exerted.

The movie’s about a guy who quit his job and went backpacking around the world for about a year.  In the movie he explores the culture and lifestyle of backpacking, and some of the experiences during a journey away from home for an extended period of time.  Some people he met along his travels in hostels and such, ended up being part of his documentary, where they discussed their own motivations and talked about the whole traveling-for-a-long-time thing.  Throughout the movie, you notice how the main guy grows into the rest of the world the longer he travels.  It’s not necessarily that he was just more confident or complacent, or even numbed by his overexposure of a “good thing”– though he does mention this.  It was more so that he was more aware of the everything out there:  more educated, well traveled, grounded, more human.

After I finished it, I would have to agree with all the positive reviews.  Though, not so much because it was “good movie”, but because it was enlightening, informative, and pretty damn inspiring.  My suggestible mind rearranged some priorities around, financial and otherwise, to accommodate for a long trip within the coming years.  To be honest with myself, I can’t say that I’m 100% enthusiastic about traveling from country to country for an entire year, although I do like entertaining the idea and imagining myself doing it.  So realistically, a 3 month trip abroad sounds more doable.  Financially speaking, the narrator of the documentary said he spent $20k in traveling.  That’s about $1700 a month, and $5100 for 3 months.  Tack on an extra $900 for unexpected expenses and to (hopefully) overestimate, and$6k for 3 months abroad still doesn’t sound too bad.

Anyway, back to the movie.  I would really recommend watching it, as it makes you examine your own life and makes you wonder when you’re going to have the courage to not necessarily get out of your comfort zone and travel for a whole year, but to get out of your comfort zone in general and explore the world that’s outside of your comfortable little bubble.

The great thing is that our actual company’s legal department doesn’t actually handle copy review anymore.  No, our parent company does that.  This is just fantastic for various reasons.  One:  they know very little about how our company actually functions (which as I discussed in a previous post, is something like smushing Legos together and expecting a model of the Empire State Building to come from it).  Two:  I’m in California and they’re in Ohio.  Because everyone I request stuff from likes to send things after their lunch and siesta, they’re practically out of the office by the time I forward it onto them.  Three:  our actual legal team in our company that used to be here didn’t leave our parent company’s legal team much to work with, so they’re pretty fucking lost on a lot of shit.  Moreover, they’re asking me about how some of the legal processes happened, which I know nothing of because I’ve only been at this company for less than a year.

With that said, of course we missed our deadlines on launching a lot of products online and now I’m running around with my hair on fire trying to get the fucking copy and product names approved by the nice folks in legal.  But then legal has a bitch load of names to approve in front of ours, so it took the bitch who first fucked me in the ass in the beginning of this shit storm having to contact the other bitch in legal to get her to prioritize our product names because apparently those two bitches are like BFFs or something.  Problem resolved?  I’m afraid not.  That ho in legal is now going to be out of the office the entirety of next week, so the rest of the product names will be on hold until she gets back.  I emailed her back politely asking if she was going to delegate her work out, and if she had a ballpark time frame in mind of when I’d be getting the approved goods.  This cocksucker emails me back in a snoody tone, using the phrase “As I said before.”  This cow seems to think she’s told me this shit before, and that I’m supposed to know that my names will get worked on when she’s out of the office?  I searched and reread through all of her emails she sent me regarding this topic, and no where does it say or even imply that someone will be taking over her work.  I hope she finds the time to eat those bags of dick she’s been putting off to the side for so long now that she’s probably going on vacation for a week; I think she’s going through withdrawals.

In more exciting news, I finally bought my airfare to Italy so it’s pretty much official.  Now all I have to do is make some reservations in some hostels and I’m all set.  There’s a highly rated hostel in Milan that looks incredibly promising, so I’m anxious to see if it lives up to all the hype in the ratings.  The only bummer is that it looks like I’ll have to take a train from the airport into Milan, but then the walk looks like a short one.  More research at a later date.  I have to let this mentally settle first.  What I am almost certain of though, is that I’ll probably be spending New Year’s Eve/New Year’s day in Rome.  Really unsure what that entails, but I’m looking forward to spending it outside the country for once!