There is a job opportunity in one of the most beautiful places in this
state. It would be a promotion and now that I have experience in a
personnel department I would be more likely to be interviewed. And the
work they do is something amazing, important, and sometimes inspiring.
Yet, since yesterday, I've been only considering sending in an application.
I've never had an adventurous spirit (upside of the safe world of
books and role playing games, that is) and moving to a place that's
practically three hours from anywhere that I know, or want to know, is
way out of my comfort zone.
Then there's the weather. It gets quite a bit of snow up there and not
the dry stuff that can be brushed off a window like they get in so
much of the country. No, this is Sierra Cement: snow that comes down
heavy, hard, and wet; snow that is always 1/5th slush on the bottom
when the temperature's anything above freezing snow that weighs
branches down and cracks 'em off with little effort.
I can drive in the snow. I okay at it. I'm not so good at keeping calm
about the fucking morons that drive in the snow and ice with me,
though. They're the ones with bald tires who stop on a five degree
incline and get stuck. They're the ones who decided to slam on their
breaks in two inches of slush rather than down shifting (even
automatics can be down shifted) or gently pulsing their breaks.
Driving in the snow out here in the West is hard enough with idiots
and jackasses making it harder.
The idiot drivers probably aren't local, but the tourists who drive up
there to ski in the winter. Summer is even worse for tourists because
the weather up there is mild and sunny and the lake is huge and clear
and cold. There's gambling across the state line which encourage
drinking because the drinks are free as long as you feed money to the
long armed machine.
I'm not a fan of tourists crowding up the streets of a small town. I
grew up in a small town and there were insane days during the summer
when the streets were clogged with cars full of crap and the one
sidewalk was full of gawkers looking in the windows of "antique"
stores. Gah. I know I'm just a hick when I head into SF and stare at
the building along with the thousands of other yokels who end up there
each day. Still adding ten thousand tourists to a city of eight
hundred thousand is nothing like adding a thousand tourists to a city
of six thousand people.
Still, as much as I hate tourists it doesn't seem like enough of a
reason to not be willing to move there, but it's enough to make me
pause, for a really long time. I don't even know if I'd be given an
interview, let alone offered the job, but it's worth thinking about,
isn't it? Shouldn't one consider everything before applying to a job
that one only sort of wants in a place one isn't sure he's willing to
move to? For the right job I would move to a big city and there would
be no hesitation.
Hell, at one point I really wanted a job down in Los Angeles because
the place I would have worked would have been amazing and I HATE Los
Angeles. Too many horrible people with too little consideration for
the horrible people they live near. It's a terrible place, but if I
had been called to work at that job the only hesitation would have
been deciding if I needed a roommate.
So, I'm going to sit and think about maybe sending in an application
to a job that I sort of want at a place that does good things in a
city that's beautiful except for the people who visit but don't
actually live there.
