Jenna's House of Idiosyncrasies Version 10.0 [Focus.]

When I started my job at my current place of work, my part time position was called, no joke, ‘Junior Web Author’. I always resented the ‘Junior’ and routinely trimmed it out of conversations and correspondence. Eventually this title was changed to the more respectable ‘Associate Web Developer’, but by that time the connotation had stuck. Some kind of intern. However, I have made the most of it, pushing for more hours and more challenging work, innovating processes, and turning myself into an important asset.

This has paid off.

Last week one of my managers called me into his office to deliver some good news: my move up to the full time position that I had been fighting for was official, and would take effect on Monday, May 16th. The move is contingent on me continuing to go to school and eventually finishing, which means, starting in the fall, I'll be working a 40 hour work week (the late shift for West coast support, 11 AM to 8 PM) plus taking 2 to 3 classes in the morning (including 8 AMs, I'm sure). Because I have not taken school at all seriously for the last year and a half, it will take me another 3 to 4 years to graduate. The whole 12-hour day thing is going to kick my ass, and crazy me, I'm excited by the prospect! I think this is how it feels to have goals. And it feels really good.

Continuing the theme of ‘Bigness in the Life of Jenna’ I signed a new lease last week, for a studio apartment about half a block from where I live now. While the new place isn't a swank as the place I currently share with five others, it will be entirely mine. No longer sharing a bedroom with another person (even if that person is the fair red headed friend) is going to be a plus, even if it's just so I can set 4 different alarms without waking up anyone but myself.

For the first time in a long time, things are going really well. So well, in fact, that aside from the initial shock of nearly ending up in the hospital, the car accident I was in over the weekend presented itself as a minor inconvenience. This is preferable to allowing it to induce panic over how can I possibly deal with one more bad thing, which would have been my reaction just a short time ago.

I had just turned off of 316 and was heading into Winder via the 55 mile per hour Hog Mountain Road (Yes, it's really called Hog Mountain Road). I was jamming out to the new Gorillaz single, Feel Good Inc, and hoping I would make it to the party I was headed to before the rain started. I was somewhere around the second chorus, when a blue Toyota Camry pulled out from the cross road on the left side attempting to make a left turn.

Being as I was only 10 to 15 feet away from the Camry at this point, I slammed on my brakes. It was a gut reaction, as was turning hard to the right and ending up in the ditch. Instead of slamming into the middle of the other car, I had the more preferable option of mostly shuffling along side of it. It was all over in about 30 seconds, and thankfully ended in awful looking but merely cosmetic damage to Russo's entire left side.

I then spent a lot of time standing out in the rain while I got the whole thing sorted out. The woman who pulled out in front of me was perfectly amicable and expressed her apologies, and I was able to back my car out of the ditch without needing a tow.

While more damage, violence, blood or even an angrier Camry driver would have made for a more dramatic or perhaps even a funnier story, I'm happy that things turned out the way they did, that I kept a level head, and that I was immediately standing, alive, not bleeding from the head, and not trying to calm down a litigious soccer mom or a hot headed redneck. I just wish I didn't have to go through the massive hassle of dealing with car insurance companies, but such is life.

New job, new solo apartment, and wacky insurance-related mayhem. I guess this is growing up, for real this time.