Before I begin this well thought out and enlightening bullet list (which is not a cop out for a blog entry in any way, shape or form), I have to wonder if I spelled consciousness correctly. Excuse me while I consult spell check...okay, good on me. I hate when I look at a word and think, that's got to be wrong. Now, for the main event (which makes me think of the Barbara Streisand movie and I now hear Enough is Enough in my head, the duet she did with Donna Summer but oddly is not on The Main Event soundtrack - this is how my brain works):

• We have a client whose first name is Tom and last name sort of but not really sounds like Dooley. Whenever I type him a letter or e-mail, the song Tom Dooley goes through my head -

Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down
your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you're bound to die

Not exactly a lighthearted thing to have going through one's brain but it is what it is.

• While this is not universal, I am coming to the conclusion that extreme wealth is directly related to extreme arrogance, particularly in attorneys.
  
• I am so freaking grateful to have secure, full-time employment. I really wish I could help those friends who don't.
  
• Also, I'm beyond grateful to have big bosses at both jobs who are nice, friendly and appreciative. This is a rarity, in my experience, and it's those Big Bad Bosses who make me so appreciative now.
  
• Thanks to my 2nd job, I now type "ok" as "okay" since most clients want it spelled out in that manner. This is not conducive to Twitter, however, and their 140 character limit.
  
• I have so much filing to do, I'm thinking of arranging the towering stacks of file folders so that they at least have some aesthetic purpose as opposed to stressing me out, as they are now.
  
• Still haven't put away the office supply order yet. Is it the 15th yet? Damn quarterly estimates. #!*%&@*$"#!*%
  
• The phone will not stop ringing. I may end up speaking permanently in my telephone voice.
  
• Is it 5 o'clock yet?

It's really not so bad (evidenced by there being time for me to squeeze out this lame-ass excuse of a blog entry) but this has been my day so far for what it's worth.

I just wanted to let you know that in the depths of tax return letter typing despair yesterday, I felt compelled to write tax related haikus to express my, well, despair.

In a rare moment of sanity, I deleted them and did not share them here.

This is what my brain has been reduced to, writing tax return letter related haikus.

Then I began re-writing some dumb song that I now can't remember and inserting tax letter typing related lyrics. But luckily for you, I didn't write any of it down and now I can't remember (see aforementioned memory loss).

Please withhold your pity as I am not the accountant in this office (actually I'm not either of them seeing as there are two) and they are working far more and harder than I. However, they also get paid far more than I but they certainly earn it.

Also, please take my complaining as what it is - half-assed venting. I am beyond grateful to have a stable job working with nice people. Thank you employment gods. Amen.

And with that, I return to my self-imposed typing prison. Only 4 more days. Yay! And I don't have to work tomorrow (it is Easter, after all).

A long time ago, in a county far far away….

Truthfully, it isn’t actually that far away, it’s about 40 miles which takes about ½ hour to 45 minutes to drive and, well, you get the picture.

When I left WCIL back in 1997 and moved to Orange County, I was hopeful and excited to be entering a new field that logically seemed as though it would always be around. No longer would I feel threatened by the State of California’s annual budget wars. Everyone would always need a house, right?

I’ve worked at three different jobs since leaving Los Angeles County. Two of them were in the mortgage industry. I left the first because it was wearing me down, body and soul. Endless hours of work, not enough help and way too little acknowledgment.

Second job was only slightly better. I was working with friends, which made it more tolerable but, for me, it was not good for my self-confidence and self-esteem to be trying so very hard to learn a job and do it well but not succeed in any fashion. For so many years, I was the queen of the Office – I knew how to do every office job and was able to do it well. Not so much with the loan processing.

It would have been better if I was able to multi-task under immense pressure but I’m not. That, in a nutshell, is what loan processing is all about. One has to keep track of innumerable details all while wheedling with underwriters to approve the loan, begging doc drawers to send out the loan docs before the borrower’s go out of the country (because what better time to travel than when you’re buying a house) and prostrating oneself to funders to please, please, please fund this loan. Then add to that the loan officers needing this, wanting you to call that person, and WHY HASN’T THE LOAN FUNDED YET!!!!! It’s an incredibly difficult job and not one that I was meant to do. This has been a very difficult realization to come to. I tried for 2 ½ years to get it right and to be completely honest, the only reason I stayed so long was this little girl:

I was working as Shannon’s assistant and after she had her baby (in May of 2006 - please see above photo) due to HIGH child care costs, The Niece would come to work with us. Trying to make it as a loan processor while helping to juggle a baby (albeit an adorable, sweet, even-tempered one) is a disaster. With the housing market imploding into oblivion and mortgage companies going under left and right, the number of loans went into a decline. This was offset, however, by all of the lending rules changing and becoming more conservative. These changes required a great deal of creativity (completely legal creativity, that is) to get loans approved and funded, which often meant submitting a loan to multiple lenders. One person could not take care of a growing baby and do this job – hell, two people had a hard time with it.

The workload got to the point where Shannon would not have needed an assistant had The Niece not been going to work with her. Had we continued to be able to close the high number of loans possible prior to the mortgage meltdown, Shannon’s income stream would have allowed for day care much sooner than it actually happened. However, mortgage rules tightened, numbers of fundings decreased, and as a result, the company we worked for was not doing so well. Add into that an owner who is not so good at managing his finances and you may see where this is all going. For much of the second half of last year, our paychecks would suffer cuts that we didn’t know about until we actually got the check. Or we wouldn’t get a check at all. There were other financially creative measures on the part of my former boss that I won’t go into but suffice it to say, I made just about as much from unemployment when I was finally laid off in December as I was getting paid the last six months of last year.

I’d been looking for a different job from about October on but I’d really shot myself in the foot by going into the mortgage industry. People didn’t want to hire someone without recent administrative assistant experience. It didn’t matter that my skills were still good or that I’d been doing much of the same office work that an administrative assistant does. It was only through a contact known by one of the loan officers I’d worked with that I was able to be signed up with a temp agency and they in turn found me my current job.

I’m only now finally getting my shit back together, both financially and in regard to my self-confidence. By no means am I out of the woods completely but I can see the tree line from here. Perhaps it’s a sad reflection on me that so much of my self-image is related to being good at what I do for a living. If that is the case, then so be it. I’m finally feeling better about me and having a steady, reliable paycheck, even if it is a wee bit smaller, is worth its weight in gold.

I’ll have to save the rest of my update for the next entry. My lunch break is almost up and I have to get back to work. It’s April and I work for an accountant – ‘nuff said.