Waiting with breath that is bated...

The title of this post comes from a line in Sex in the City, but it is perfect for the way I am feeling right now.

I grew up in Sanger, Texas, a town of roughly 4,000 people, and a lot of cows, a lot horses, and a lot of chickens. We lived in a 2 bedroom trailer and I slept in the living room until our house burned down after being struck by lightning in 1990. We then moved to another trailer home, albeit a much nicer one, about a month later. At the age of 12 I worked at a horse ranch cleaning stalls and feeding horses. From 13-17 I worked for the Lemmons who owned a nice house that I cleaned and newspaper where I labeled papers.

We were all in homeschool when the house burned down and many of our books were burned and the entire debacle ended up really putting me behind in school. One day when I was at church the principal of Liberty Christian saw me and said, "Hey, you need to come back to Liberty and play football." My parents could not afford the 360 dollar a month tuition and so I ended up getting to back to school there on a football scholarship.

After graduation I worked as a janitor at the post office, I drove a special ed bus and I worked as a janitor at a kindergarden in the evenings while taking 11 hours of college. Things were very busy, but after 8 years of working various jobs to put myself thru college, I finished without any student loans and no college debt.

I worked at Boeing for a while building air plane cables and then left there, lived with my sister for 6 months and went to SMU for an MCSE - a microsoft certificati0n that guaranteed a lucrative position - it did. At one point I was working as a contractor making 35 dollars an hour. For one month I had a bring home check of 8,000 dollars - I thought I had hit the big time. That position didn't last and so I took a more secure position making great money at a place called Custom Food Group. The people were nice, but the hours were long and my responsibilities were impossible. After nearly having a nervous breakdown at 24 I quit.

I tried to become a teacher but that didn't work out despite the fact that I emailed my resume to every single school in Texas - public, private, Buddhist, Muslim, you name it, I tried to get a job there and I never did. I finally settled for a job at Texas Instruments. When I interviewed for the job here I prayed to God that I wouldn't get it. 2 months went by and I didn't hear anything and so I assumed that I didn't get it. Then I got a call and I got the job. It was a contract position and so the pay was 17,000 less than what I was making at Custom Food Group. The only upside was the fact that when 5 o'clock rolled around I didn't ever have to work late like I did at the previous job.

After 2 and 1/2 years in the grueling helpdesk I finally worked my way into the posiiton I have now - however, I am still a contractor and that means that I don't have the same benefits as regular T.I. employees have. I work through a company called Ajilon and I have been working here now for 4 years. The problem with being a contractor is that you don't get the great benefits of other TI employees. You don't get profit sharing or employee stock purchasing options and you don't get the great health benefits.

Well, I just found out this week that all of that is about to change. I was offered a position as a T.I. employee and it is almost like winning the lottery for me.

I want to thank all of you internet, for your prayers and love and support. For listening to me gripe, for putting up with my petulance, and for loving me unconditionally.

And if you read through this entire post then that means you must really love me because it was long and boring.