So for the past weekend and up until today, I’ve been signing papers left to right with my signature and SSN. As I said in my last post, I was offered a teaching position at the technical school I graduated from in 07 for Web Design. Now, nothing is set in stone and I’m not 100% sure about the details just yet, but I did have to first start the application process if I wanted to anywhere near considered. But boy, there sure were a lot of papers to sign and read! Today, I went to bring in the stack and needed to fill out a few more to make it complete, so I’m hoping that I will be able to finish that up this week!

I’m really looking forward to this though. If you’re wondering, the position is for a short-term HTML/CSS class. With the help of my old teacher, she said this could possibly lead into a full-time teaching position either there at WPT (Winter Park Tech) or in the new school they built by my house. The new school would actually be more convenient, since it is closer then WPT. Wish me luck!

Now onto the stress portion! My sister, her husband, 4 children, and some random girl are coming to stay at my house for Spring Break. They will be arriving this Saturday, most likely during the evening and I am freaking out! My sister and I aren’t what you would call loving siblings, we are far from it…much worse then sibling rivalry, so I’m a little antsy on her arrival. While I love my nieces and nephews, they can be very hard to handle sometimes and knowing my sister, at one point in time during her stay here, she will have either me or my mother babysit them. Which when that happens, I will be staying at my boyfriends house! =P

Not only that, but she is bringing some random 14 year old girl with her. OK, so she isn’t THAT random, my sister says she is the daughter of the lady who sometimes babysits her kids and said she could come down with my sister. Personally, I think it’s odd, but whatever, I’m just surprised my mom is OK with it…>_>

That’s not the only thing that has me raising a brow, but apparently the girl wants to go to an all ages club. Basically, some nights clubs have like a “kids night”, where I think they let ages 12 to 18 in the club and they get to party till like 12 or 1AM. I think at 14 you should worry more about school and not going to a stupid club. My sister was like, can you take her? One, no because why would I want to do that and two because I’m 20 years of age, they wouldn’t let me in. I’m totally against it as you can see and would someone would smack some sense into this girl and tell her not want to grow up so fast. Geez…you’re only 14 once and before you know it, you’ll be 18 and can then have all the clubbing fun you want! >_<

My poor site has been so neglected! I feel bad. I have ideas to do this and that with it and then I turn the other way for a second, and forget all about it. Sad, I know.

So for the past month and a half…a lot has happened! I lost my job, am struggling to pay my bills, signed up for college, am helping my aunt in Tallahassee with this business “project” she has, got offered a teaching position at the old tech school I went, and my sister and her family are coming down to our house for summer break! I’ll break each one of those down below:

Lost My Job: Yup, it’s true! The one thing that just needed to screw me over…my job! As some of you know, I was working as a web designer for a small Internet marketing and “web design” firm.

I was really excited when I got a call for an interview (or was it an email?). When in the interview though, one of the many questions that the boss asked me should have had me running for the hills!

“Can you design websites like this?” Basically he showed me a nice SIMPLE design created by their EX-web designer. Me being in need of a job BADLY, said yes of course! Not realizing the underlining question he was really asking, which was:

“Can you be a clone of our LAST designer?” If I had known then that was the real question, I probably would have answered with a “No sir, no designer is always the same.”

Through out my whole 4 or 5 months there, a day could not pass without them talking about the ex-designer. Of course I played it off saying it didn’t bother me, but it did. How would you feel if that happened to you on a daily basis?

Anyways, I created the layouts to how THEY wanted it. I had no creative freedom, although once or twice, the boss scolded me telling me that “he’s not the designer, that’s what I’m here for”. Then why the crap are you asking to see the design and go over it and make changes to how YOU see fit? Don’t get me wrong, I know a second opinion or eye to make sure everything fits the bill is fine, but in the end they always ended up designing it themselves and believe me, it wasn’t anything special. VERY simple…usually two colors max and usually the same “layout” as other designs they have made.

I’m not trying to complain, but it was very frustrating at times to work for them and then at the end of the December…they “laid me off”. They didn’t “fire” me (that’s what they said). They said I was doing great and fine during the beginning, but slowly was going down hill. That comment was probably because of the two or three clients who weren’t statisfied with anything, but that was all my fault! They even started to give side work to their EX-designer who they loved and worshiped. Saying “he just gets it”, gets what?!

For one thing, the guy codes in nothing but tables, his coding was horribly messy (I could never find ANYTHING and would always just re-do it from scratch, which took more time). Even his Photoshop layers were in a complete mess. I ALWAYS had to re-do the layout and copy it to the best of my ability, but did the job see that? Of course not!

I created more on spot designs then ones who needed 5 -6 samples and never chose one (even though 4 out those samples would be practically designed by the boss and team), but hey who’s counting?

As people, they’re not horrible, they gave me an extra check that I didn’t work for, because they felt bad, and were sometimes good listeners to problems I had (not that I said much), but overall as a company, I was a little disappointed.

I will talk about the other topics I mentioned above in another blog post. Gives me more to blog about!

Two blogs ago I said I was planning to move away from Florida and start a new life in the Big Apple…well plans have changed since then (I know it wasn’t that long…) and well I feel I should take this one small step at a time. Also I have a few little naggers around me that keep telling me it’s a bad idea and how I should think things through and blah blah blah…so I’m half listening to them and also listening to what I think is best and in the end, it seems the best is to just stay here for a bit longer.

It saddens me deeply, but if it will help out in the long run…what’s another one or two years? Yikes!

Ah, well at least with this time frame I can save up more money, shoot a few films I have in mind and also stay with my friends for a bit longer. (They were starting to attack me!)

All in all, I’m OK with it and hey, they always say that good things come to people who wait, so here I am waiting!