What a Difference Eighteen Months Makes

It occurred to me, while driving, as all the most important and inane things occur to me then, that I've been home roughly eighteen months now.

I wasn't the first of our brave band of Jakarta sisters to go.  La Rus went first.  She make the jump back to California.  I've been down to visit and reminisce. She's one of the few I still talk and text with on a regular basis.  Last week she was awed that her daughter is starting eighth grade.  I just saw her last year and I swear she wasn't nearly that old then. Guess that means age is probably sneaking up on us too.

I was the next to go, last February, landing more permanently in Seattle in March. Since then I started a new career and worked very successfully in it.  I've traveled both for work and fun. I'm in a relationship (gasp!).

I'm not even close to the one with the most news. The kiwi got engaged several months ago. She is posting out save the dates for her wedding in Bali next year.  What a great excuse to go back and help her kick off married life right.

There is yet another member of the tribe with even more news.  UK, my former sushi companion and life line for many a night in JKT, has not only been engaged, and been married, but she's become an incubator.  I'm secretly hoping for baby chicks but I doubt I'll get my wish. She's flown the coop and headed back to England while her hubby sails the seven seas.

That's a year and a half for ya. Who'd have thunk we'd all come so far in such a sort time?  And yet, it feels as though my days in Jakarta were ages ago.

In a mere year and a half, I've settled in to coupledom.  We prefer to be home, cooking, relaxing.  Gone are the clubbing days of staying out until 7am in the most random places in Jakarta. Instead of going to the pubs and clubs, I host beer and cocktail "parties" at my house, party being best described as a simple gathering of people. We enjoy a beerfest on occasion, a backpacking trip, a recent pursuit of vegetable gardening and such. Though I'd hoped for this, even yearned for it, I'd also kibitzed friends who had become "boring" in the coupledom.  Who never came out any more. Now, the kidding has come full circle.  25 and I went to a birthday party for his friend.  It was in Seattle.  She is several years younger than me so the gathering was in Capitol Hill, in a series of bars and clubs. 25 has never been a wild partier and drinker in the time I've known him. After a couple hours of awkward small talk with people we didn't know, and some quality time with his friend and her bf, we hastily make our retreat.  We still didn't get home until 1am and we were both knackered. The friend's bf said he knew we'd be the first to go, that it wouldn't be our scene.

I'm happy to admit, both to him and here, that he was right.

Da da daaaaa. . . . Unemployed!

It's official, I'm unemployed. 

I just filed for unemployment benefits for the first time EVER. As a contractor, I knew my contract was finite. The end came slightly more abruptly and in a less courteous manner than I'd have hoped for, but I knew it was coming.  The nice thing about being a contractor is that you do know it's going to end.  When I was let go/downsized from a job before it was a surprise and upsetting.  This time it was a good thing.  Being without a paycheck isn't a good thing but getting a final answer was.  VMC was being mysterious about what they were going to do with me (end my contract, move me to another department) and that made me more anxious than having a decision. 

I'm working with several contracting firms and recruiters.  I'm applying to everything in the field and can interview any time.  It looks like there will be several projects starting in October and I should be well placed to take a position on one of them.  Lots of options too: local, travel, longer term, very short term. Hmmmm, what will be next on my agenda?

I am in that old catch 22.  I wanted to travel but didn't have any time to do so with work and no vacation days.  Now I have the time but since I don't know when the next paycheck will come in, I shouldn't spend hundreds (or thousands) of dollars on a trip just yet.  When I lock in a new job, then maybe. Although, Portland and California are so close they don't really count as travel, right?

With that, I'm off to a phone interview. Fingers crossed!