I have a new job!

For the past two years, I have worked at a local cafe that is part of a larger chain of cafes. For the past nine months, I have been the manager of that cafe. At the beginning of this week, I was promoted from Cafe Manager to the Operations Support team. This means that I will be the liaison between new cafe franchise owners and head office, and I will be leading the franchise owners through the process of setting up new cafes–from recruiting, hiring, and training staff, to setting up accounts and vendors, to ordering equipment, to ensuring a smooth-running cafe once it’s open.

Some back story is that four weeks ago, I applied for this Operations Support job, and a week after that, simultaneous to the interview process for the job, the decision was made to close down the cafe I was managing. This resulted in three highly stressful weeks that I spent fretting over the interviews, hoping to get the job, wondering where I would go if I didn’t get the job, working at several interim cafes until I found out what I’d be doing permanently, and being generally anxious about THE FUTURE.

My shifts at other cafes have been one-on-one training sessions with staff, mostly on barista. I love training people, and I love making coffees, so I’m enjoying it. Seeing different cafes has been fun too, and it’s good to experience cafes with different systems in place and different volumes of customers so when it comes time to liaise with these new franchise owners, I will know what I’m talking about if they’re opening a store double the size of the one I used to manage. But at the back of my mind, all this time, was still the question, “Where am I going to end up?”

I got the phone call while taking a bath. I had my second stage interview last Thursday, and was told I’d hear from them the next day. I happened to have off on Friday, so I spent the day trying to concentrate on something, ANYTHING, to keep my mind off the pending success or failure of my interviews. I tried going for a walk, writing, reading, playing the piano, browsing the internet, weeding the garden, doing dishes, hanging up laundry… Nothing worked. Nothing calmed my nerves. At least I accomplished a lot around the house! By 4:30 in the afternoon, I still hadn’t heard from head office, so I assumed  I would have to spend the whole weekend in this state of unknowing, not learning of their decision until the Monday. I decided to have a bath. I ran the water hotter than normal, added a few drops of T’s essential oils, and began reading a new book. Twenty minutes later, I got the call.

That was the best bath I’ve ever taken.

Now I’m playing the waiting game. I got the job (and I’m darn happy about it!) but I have to wait until November 15 to start because the person I’ll be working with, who is going to train me, is on holiday. Boo.

So I continue to work at other cafes, training baristas and biding my time until I can start my new job. And hopefully, now that my nerves have settled and I am back to a semi-routine with work, I can write again. Yes, that’s write, I let work interfere with writing. I was disappointed that I let it happen, but no sense dwelling on it now, is there? I spent 45 minutes writing this evening and it felt GOOD. C’mon, muse, I got the job. Now there are more important things to worry about. Like WRITING.

My goal: By the end of this weekend, I will write one new poem draft, three new pages of a short story (even if I think they aren’t good), and I will submit one poem for publication. Check back on Monday to congratulate me for reaching my goal!