Tuesday, April 15, 2008

The life of Yonatan: Spring Edition (Part 2)

So when I left off the story, I was glad to have a week break and get a chance to get my head in order. I spent most of the time watching Law and Order and relaxing, knowing that I would soon get a phone call about a new assignment.

Unfortunately, the call never came. It has now been over a month since I have had any assignment that lasted more than a few hours, and I had only two of those.

So what have I been doing?

Sitting in Columbia Heights Coffee, my neighborhoods amazing coffee shop, drinking massive amounts of Tea and applying to jobs.

In the last month I have gone to interviews at 3 staffing agencies, none of which have gotten back to me, and had a couple interviews.

In fact one of the companies that I have interviewed with: The Democratic Campaign Management Program, has just offered me a job. I am not sure how I feel about it as it would mean leaving DC and going somewhere else in the country. It would be another leap of faith in my life, but it would probably be great for my career. So we shall see.

If anyone reading this has heard of them, please pass me any inside info that you might have.

So that is what I have been up to recently...

I am heading back home of Pesach which will be really nice, and will soon be making a decision.

I will get back into normal blogging soon...I promise

Monday, April 14, 2008

The life of Yonatan: Spring Edition (Part 1)

Well I haven't made any real updates here in quite and while and so I figured I might as well get around to doing this whole blogging thing again.


What have I been up to?


Well If I had written this back in the fall or even at the beginning of the winter I could have said "Not much." I had been doing what I had been doing ever since I got to do: Coasting. I was getting fairly regular assignments. Money was coming in and life was... acceptable.

But then things changed.

The first major slap across my contentedness came in December.

Through a friend I had gotten an interview with the American wing of the Israeli peace movement: Americans for Peace Now. I had a good first interview and was called back of the second one within an hour of leaving the first one. At the second one I was told that I "practically had the job" and that they were going to conduct a couple more interviews but that I "was in the top tier." I was also told that they would try and make a decision by the end of the week. This was on the Wednesday before Christmas.

When I didn't hear anything back by the end of the week, I wasn't too concerned. After all they were probably on vacation now, like most of the rest of DC. It had seemed like such a surefire thing but. as I sat at home, with nothing to do and no assignments, the "Christmas break" only thing that kept my hopes up. Come the New Year, I eventually got a new assignment with AIPAC and sat back and waited to hear. And waited. And waited.

I tried to call on several occasions, but no one took my call or returned any of my messages. One month after my second interview, I had completely given up and was more than a little annoyed.
Eventually, I just flat out asked the person who answered the phone if she was the person who had been hired for the position. She was, and she had been hired some 2 weeks earlier.

After my assignment with AIPAC ended I got another assignment with a consulting firm which was amazing dull and annoying. When that assignment ended, even though i didn't yet have an assignment for the next week, I thought it wouldn't be too long before my next one and was kind of glad to have a break.

However things were not to be so easy.

This is not to say that some fun stuff didn't happen in this time period, including my teaching on Parsha Mishpatim at the DC Beit Midrash, and helping some friends move and their moving party. Bit I wasn't really happy with my life.

Next....things get worse.