LadyGypsy.net – the blog of Kimberly Dowd of New Jersey

My C-P id, ready to turn in.

Later, I prop my iPHone on the edge of the sink as I wash my hands. My elbow bumps the phone into the sink. It falls into the sink and the display promptly winks out. Ugh.

Friday I dealt with the sadness of my last day. Except it really wasn’t all that sad. I had an amazing cake with Mickey Mouse on it, and I got a Toy Story going away card and a $100 Visa gift card. I managed to muddle through my goodbye speech without completely losing my marbles. And I left at 11am, with everyone waving and cheering as I walked out the door for the last time. Again, I thought I’d lose it when I heard the door click behind me, but…it was time. I loved my years at the C-P but the job (d)evolved into something that I’d never apply for if I saw it in the paper. I will miss my coworkers, though.

The $100 gift card went with me from the C-P to the Apple Store at the Cherry Hill Mall, where I bought the iPhone 4S in white. I stop at the post office. I come home. I faceplant into the sofa. Later that night I wake up and have a cough and a 102 degree fever.

This morning, I wake up at 7am (!!) with a cough, a heavy wheeze and a 101.5 degree fever. I make a doctor appointment for 9:10 and hey, it snowed! So WM decides to drive me there, since I’m practically speaking in tongues because of the fever. I don’t do fevers well.

Diagnosis: Bronchitis, which could have turned into walking pneumonia if I didn’t nip it in the bud early (which I really had to because OMG I START A NEW JOB ON MONDAY AND I NEED TO NOT BABBLE!) The doc gave me a nebulizer treatment while I was there. Never had one before, and I’d like not to have one again.

Now I’m on an inhaler, cough medicine, a Z-pac, and an anti-inflammation steroid. My fever is slowly breaking (down to 99.5) and I feel human again for the first time in over 24 hours.

But at least struggling to breathe kept me from worrying about sucking at the new job. Yay perspective!

I don’t need to be at 100% health on Monday — but I need to be well enough to fake it. (I would like to feel better enough to go to Target tomorrow, though. Because I’d like a new notebook and some new pens to bring to the NEW JOB AND I REALLY HOPE I DON’T SUCK AT IT AND THE PEOPLE LIKE ME!)

This past Tuesday, I gave my notice at the Courier-Post after 8 years of awesomeness. (Note: I’m there for 12 years…do the math.) I accepted a position in the membership department of…TNP. That’s short for The New Place, because I’m not naming company names yet out in the open. TNP is a non-profit trade organization for a certain specialty of doctor. I’ll be working closely with their database of members and non-members, making sure that it’s accurate and growing.

From 2008. I actually miss that paneling.

So on Monday, January 23, I start my new job. It’s in Philadelphia, so I get to ride the train in every day. My apartment complex runs daily shuttles to the train station, and the office complex runs daily shuttles from the train station. There are even food trucks outside the building! I bought a messenger bag! Right now this all sounds thrilling but I give it 4 months before it starts to get old.

This is truly the end of an era in my life, because I’m also leaving behind “web work” as my day job. My internet love will have to be satisfied by doing jobs on the side, which I’m already looking into doing. And I’ll really miss about 90% of the people at the C-P. But after all of the layoffs and furloughs, it’ll be nice to get into a place that’s actually growing and thriving.

Gannett stock prices during my tenure. Yeesh.

Here’s the ugly part: It’s taken me a year and a half of searching for me to get a new job. Only in the last six months have I really received responses from my resume. I’ve been interviewed and rejected by “Plucky Local Newspaper Company,” (phone interview, in-person interview) “Big SJ Hospital System Who Loves Numbers,” (phone interview, 2 in-person interviews; resubmitted my resume for a related position and got no calls) and “Evil Cable Company” (phone interview, in-person interview). For TNP, I had an informal lunch, a phone interview and 2 in-person interviews, one that consisted of my meeting with 7 people over the course of 2 1/2 hours. I also never would have found the TNP position without knowing someone who already worked there who tipped me off about the job.

That also explains why my blogging has been sparse. Because when your employers are constantly making lists of who to lay off next, blogging that you’re taking another day off to go into Philly to interview isn’t very smart. This has been an 18-month non-bloggable issue.

This coming week will be sad. There will be a cake for me on Wednesday morning, a happy hour for me Thursday after work, and my exit interview at 10am Friday, during which I’ll hand over my access badge. Then at around 11:30am Friday, I’ll walk out the door.

In 2012 I will start a new job, get married, and turn 40. If that doesn’t convince you that it’s all going to end in December, nothing will.

Grab your juggling balls & unicycles, for the end of the world is nigh*. REPENT!

*originally spoken in my 20′s as I flushed a colony of sick and dying Sea Monkeys down the toilet