Update

It seems like the only time I can write a meaningful update on my life is when I’m on an airplane scared for my life.  The scared for my life part doesn’t play into the equation (although it does interrupt my writing quite a bit) but the fact that it doesn’t seem I can get any writing done otherwise is likely due to technology’s constant intrusion in my life. If there’s a wifi connection wherever I’m at I’m probably too focused on social media and other distractions to actually get any writing done.

But alas, I’m siting on the plane without any interruptions (other than the occasional bump) and temporarily job-less, which leaves lots of time for writing. A better use of my time would be sleeping, but due to said fear of airplanes it’s sort of impossible for me to fly and sleep. 

Anyhoo, as I said before, I’m temporarily unemployed and therefore with some free time on my hands I decided to move up my trip to Miami a few days so that I could see a good friend one last time before she moves to London. We’ll have a mini girls reunion this weekend and then the rest of the family will join next week so we can head off to Disney for some insanely expensive fun.  

It’s been an interesting twist of events that brings me to today. After my last day of work at my previous job my family and several other of our inmediate families went north to a place called Mancora where we spent the 5 nights around Easter Break. This is the first time that I travel to this town and it’s the first time we spend Easter somewhere other than the family beach house since having moved to Peru. The trip was amazing, I spent lots of time reading, doing yoga, running, actually going in the water which is way warmer than the ocean in Lima, and really totally disconnected from the old job.  About the third day into the trip someone makes a funny comment, “hey, so and so said that there’s a dengue epidemic in this area”.  And I go, hmm, wish I had known that sooner and I would’ve probably been a bit more generous with the Off, not just for me but for the kids especially Sebas who is even more prone to getting bitten by mosquitos than me, and I thought I was bad!  Lo and behold, the day after coming back from the trip I go to the gym and start feeling muscle pains which I dismissed as being due to a strenuous workout. That afternoon I happened to be at the doctor’s office when I started feeling a fever and massing headache coming in.  Five days of barely being able to get out of bed with a 40C fever and one dengue test later confirmed what I feared the moment I started getting the fever.  I got dengue!  It wasn’t so bad after those 4-5 of lying in bed with miserable body and bone aches and relentless headaches, but a couple of weeks later I’m still not at 100% energy level.  Most of the time I want to sleep at 8 pm and I’m having a hard time getting my long runs in. And I was doing so well on my half marathon training! I had even run the fastest 5K either ever or at least since I started using Nike+ app. :)  So now I’ve got the half coming up in about 5 weeks and not sure what to expect. I had wanted to maybe beat my half PR, and if I got really lucky (or cocky) I had wanted to do a sub-2 hour half, but we shall see now!  Also, while I was in the middle of the worst days, it was Sebas’ 7th birthday party, which I feel like I can’t even write about because it’s like I was there physically but I wasn’t there mentally or emotionally.  I hope Sebas never gets to read this but I just wanted the whole thing to be over as quickly as possible so that I could get back into bed!  I honestly don’t know how I survived that party, thank God I had hired a party planner that I pretty much told at the beginning of the party had to handle everything cause I was totally out of it.  Standing up felt harder than running the NYC marathon that day.

On my last day at work I posted a snarky Facebook status update to sort of let everyone know I was leaving my old job.  It was something like “I am looking for a great job that has flex hours and pays really well and lets me still have time to spend with my kids and work out and have a life. Those interested please send me an inbox…I love yoga, running, cross fit, marketing, digital marketing, etc.”.  I obviously meant that as a joke (at least a half joke, of course I would want that in real life but not necessarily expecting any miracles!) but a friend of a friend saw the post and decided to ask me in for an interview.  Well, my last day at work was March 31st and today is April 23rd (now 24th since our flight was so delayed) and I have a job offer with that company.   I won’t divulge names just yet because I’m still thinking things over, but my head and my heart are strongly leaning towards a yes not just because of the serendipitous way I happened to stumble upon this person (and the reinforced belief that social media can sometimes be a force of good!), but also because I just finished reading a book written by this Company’s CEO and her philosophy regarding careers is so dang close to mine I just can’t help feel that this might be a good career fit for me.  On top of that it offers the flexibility I so desperately wanted (which hopefully will lead to that time spent with kids and working out!).  And I feel like I will get back to actually doing marketing which I realize I have missed tremendously (hopefully some of it digital!) and working in a Company that has a mission to improve people’s lives which I kind of miss from my P&G days too.  So there are a lot of positives to this job offer and not a lot of negatives (the main one would be having to start right after this trip which I wasn’t planning on doing, mainly cause I didn’t think I would get an offer so fast!).  But I am incredibly (and pleasantly) surprised by this turn of events and hopeful that as I turn over a new leaf I might actually be heading into some work that will make me truly happy and will help me enjoy life in Peru much more.  So many people reacted to my post on Facebook saying stuff like “when you put your desires out there the universe conspires” that I am really inclined to believe it.

 

Now finally drinking the wine which I hope will calm the flying nerves down a bit…see you in a few hours Miami!