Merced = Mercy

It's been a weird couple of months of job searching. 

I saved myself for my first choice (Mercy*, of course) all the way until 4th of July when I lost my mind and applied to all the things. Then all the interviews came at once, including Mercy's. I was tempted by one 8-5 job (you can be a nurse, make a difference, AND drop off and pick up your kid!), and left another place before finishing my orientation shifts.

It's like dating half-heartedly and browsing Tinder (I mean Indeed) when you KNOW who you want but you don't know if they are interested in a second date but maybe you'll save yourself for them and turn down everyone else just in case one day they look your way...

So you leave town with your kid to visit family and finally meet your dad's secret girlfriend who turns out to be a Trump supporter, shootings happen all over America, and you think the end is near, all hope is nigh. Then a call arrives from HR pointing you to an email in your inbox, and you nearly go blind from all the celebration stickers your mind superimposes onto the visual field.

Hopefully the background check goes okay, because not sure if I can magic up a English language Taiwanese high school transcript from 20 years ago, or a W2 from a defunct Taiwanese magazine I wrote a column for in Chinese. I've only gotten chest X-rays to prove I don't have active TB once a year for the past three years (Thanks, Taiwan, for the fish and BCG vaccine) and I can reach my toes (was asked to do that, oddly, at my last physical).

A brief comparison of the difficulty level of life events that are actually dating or have been likened to dating (simile! not metaphor!) in recent conversations seems to go in this descending order, from, "Is this even possible?" to, "No prob":

Getting a literary agent > Dating someone and it works out--for life > Having and caring for a baby/young child > Getting a job at your dream hospital > Nursing school > Getting published > Getting into a nursing program > Getting any job > Getting any date.

With time and patience, may all my classmates (and anyone else on a search) get their dream jobs as well! Dating's overrated; employment is not.

And thank you, everyone, for all of your support and for being there through this journey!

*Merced, incidentally, means Mercy in Spanish. It works.