Well I Guess this is Growing Up
I’ve been listening to a lot of Blink 182 recently, and I felt like this phrase was a great way to sum up the past several months of my failed adult-ing. In a previous post, I described various reasons that I decided to decline my contract to teach in France again. One very real reason was that I used all of my Savings account last year to travel and to live more comfortably. (Y’all it is hard to live on a disposable income of 400 euros per month!!). Also, I had to start thinking about my future. I turned 26 this winter, officially losing the ability to be on my parents’ health insurance.
Before I had decided I was going to stay, I got a job serving at a restaurant. I figured I just needed something for the summer to save up before I went back to France. However, I ended up enjoying working at the restaurant and stayed there for several months after deciding that I wasn’t going back to France. I worked with people from all over the place, and it was fun to get to hear different languages all the time. Plus, I got the afternoons to myself to enjoy the summer weather!
I knew December was my D-Day and I would officially lose my health insurance. I figured I’d start to look at normal jobs in the fall. For some reason, in my mind it wouldn’t take very long to find a job. When I was applying after graduating, I interviewed at a couple of places then almost immediately had an offer. So naturally, I put off applying longer than I should have. 
One piece of advice for people looking for a new job – NEVER stop applying just because you got an interview or something seems to be panning out. I got a few leads and would stop looking online at other places, essentially shooting myself in the foot; when those “leads” didn’t turn into offers, I had made zero progress and just wasted precious time I could’ve been applying elsewhere. After a while, I started to get really frustrated that nothing was coming to fruition. Mid-November, I ended up accepting a temporary position just so I could have a normal daytime schedule, knowing that this obviously didn’t help my impending loss of health insurance.
As it turns out, despite what my headhunter tried to tell me, this temporary gig was very temporary (2-3 months, she said, and “who knows! If they like you maybe they will decide to keep you!”). This was quite possibly the most mind numbing experience I’ve ever had. I did more in my first summer college internship! I kid you not – I spent the day either scanning files or going through a folder of 1,200+ files and checking if each one was saved to the employee filing system. As soon as I finished sorting through said folder, they informed me (through my headhunter) that they no longer needed my assistance. I was told mid-week at 2:00pm that it was going to be my last day. LOL. Best yet, this was one week after I had moved out of my mom’s house and started paying rent.
Following this fun little 3 week filing adventure, I was essentially unemployed for six weeks. That’s a really long time without steady income when you are paying rent and student loan payments and not trying to live on rice! Christmas is definitely the worst time to apply to places. Thankfully, after new years the job hunt started picking up and I ended up with two great job offers in the same week! Yay! Finally happy things!
It’s a little weird to be 26. Being unemployed on my birthday was a bit anticlimactic. I definitely thought my life would be a little less shambly at this point, but I’m working on it! I really love my new job and 2018 is definitely going better than the last half of 2017 did. Minus the fact that a random “Wind Storm” completely ruined my first travel plans since September (what even is a wind storm!?). Canceled Miami trip aside, I’ve got some fun plans for the rest of the year! Keep an eye out for more posts, both about old trips and new.
XoXo
