anywhere I roam.

Ha! It's been almost 2 months since my last entry. I guess I was taking a summer vacay from my bliggity-blog. Not that it's all that stressful, but I did have some stuff I was trying to figure out, and that kind of introspection is never really conducive to writing, at least not publicly.

I think I mentioned that I went back to Cali for a long-weekend type visit in early June. While visiting one of my MDT instructors, I was offered the opportunity, by a company rep who was visiting the MDT facility, to hire on with Oceaneering, a much larger offshore ROV company, based out of Louisiana. Upon my return to life and work in NOLA, I was sent out for a week to the DB16. But when the job ended earlier than expected, I was promptly placed on (unpaid) standby for a shipwreck job. Standby is job limbo: you can't really do anything except wait around for the job to go out, but there's not a ton for you to do while you wait. Here's what I did during that week.5 on the beach: I recuperated from a redux of the same bizarreness I suffered last year; I worked on evening out my tan for to look awesome in my bridesmaid dress; I read The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle and was sort of blown away; I called Oceaneering to set up an appointment to sign papers and secure my place in one of the upcoming training sessions.

I'm not sure if it's my MN upbringing, or having worked for the nonprofits, or something instilled in me by the Benedictines, but for some reason, I always have the idea in my wee brain that working for a smaller company/entity/organization is better than working for a large corporation. Now, I'm sure in some instances this is absolutely the case. But, I think I'm mostly done with believing that. I've had far more bad experiences than good, actually, and I could enumerate them all here to prove my point, but I won't bother. The thing about working offshore, for me, is that: I'm a woman > I can't go out on some/many jobs (due to lack of sleeping accomodation) > small company has limited jobs > I can't go out on any of these > big company has more jobs > I can work more. Also big company offers training, whereas small company offers... not so much training. Strange that I should feel more invisible at a small company than at a larger one, no?

Anyhoo. 2 weeks ago I quit SeaTrepid. 7 weeks from now I'll start training with Oceaneering. In the meanwhile, I'm in MN hanging out and enjoying the last of the summer, which I've been missing for the past couple years.