Committed

Thats all.

One of the nasty side effects of eating differently is the wasting of food!! I’m not great at actually cooking everything I intend to when I start the week out. By saturday of each week I’m tossing out things like once-gorgeous portobellas, formerly-beautiful green asparagus, no-longer-luscious lemons, and overripe-sweet pears. I feel like a fruit and vegetable murderer when I do that.

SO, to help combat this nasty habit I’ve developed, I’m going to lessen the amount of produce I buy per shopping visit, with the intention of buying less of it more often. And, even more bold, I’m going to try composting. I have yet to understand how composting even works, so we’ll see how that goes.

I know the 3fc community is all about weight loss, and I only occasionally write directly about my struggles with weight. But since I live my life holistically, I figure all aspects of my life are interrelated - including my career and my weight. How’s that for a dotted line!

So, the news is that I got a call today from another company asking if I would interview. Gotta tell ya’, this call came at just the right time. I was starting to lose faith in myself after being demoted. I was so crushed, and it killed my confidence. I was obsessed with self-defeating thoughts like: What am I going to do now? Who would want me? I’m not educated enough or experienced enough to get another job. I’m dumb, and people are going to see through me.

That call really turned things around for me, just to know that one of the first companies I contacted was interested in talking to me. I feel so much better! It made me feel hopeful about my career potential, but I was also pleasantly suprised that having options made being at my current job much more tolerable. It made all the difference!

So rather than indulge my inner child with a 3-day pastry binge, I’ve decided to take a more grown-up approach to my job woes:  Graduate School (MBA).

My target school is only moderately selective.  I have most of the admissions guidelines met or exceeded:  3.0 undergrad GPA, good resume, letters of recommendation, ability to write a decent admissions essay, and a nice profile of community / volunteer work.  I have just under 2 months to prepare before I’ll have to apply for Summer term.

The only thing I’m not sure about is the GMAT.  I have not ever taken this exam and my last standardized exam was over 15 years ago.  They say with my other qualifications, I will need to score at least a 550 for a good shot at acceptance.

Folks online are talking about how difficult it is to score over 700; should I infer that a 550 is easy???  I’m going to buy some books and perhaps enroll in an online prep class as well.  Hopefully it won’t be too tough.  I’m excited to refresh on my skills and prepare, but I don’t want to get too nuts about it all.  I have limits to how much I care about this.  There are plenty of other less selective schools that will take me!

So it looks like I get to stay employed for now, but I’m getting demoted instead. Plus, I was barked at and scolded and told in no uncertain terms to not get too comfortable. So, for the near term I will have to do cartwheels and acrobatics to be constantly proving my worth.

I can totally acknowledge that this is all ego. I really should be grateful to keep my job in this terrible job market. Nonetheless, it is really tough. I’ve always been a star at work, and I thought I was a great contributor. I thought I was on an upward climb. I would have never predicted this.

It hasn’t affected my pay yet, but I’m just waiting.

The good news is, this validated my decision to go to grad school. I’m really excited.

The even better news is that I’ve maintained the few pounds of weight loss that I had a few weeks ago. And, despite the overwhelming urge, I stayed away from hubby’s mint chip ice cream (my childhood favorite!) during the post-workday meltdown I had yesterday.