When I say surprise, I mean absolutely tricked into finding her at the airport. Hillary and my brother in law Simon convinced me to tag along to pick one of their friends up from the airport. Dreading the next day, the start of a new work week on the phones, we made our way to San Diego international, and pulled up to the arrivals section. After waiting a minute and hearing Hillary text in the back, she told me to look outside the sliding reflective glass doors, and I saw her. I was greeted by our friend at the airport, who was in fact Fiona Roberts. I was absolutely dumb founded. Shocked and awed, I felt like I had somehow cheated time and space itself, since she was meant to get here in August. I got out of the car, still starstruck, and embraced her. Aside form the hugs and kisses, all she had to offer me was this cheeky smile for the next week and "I can't believe you didn't even realise it!!!".
Yeah, well, I can't be a mind reader all the time. So I've not had too much time by myself to write blog posts as it turned out - and certainly between a 5:30 am start and fun filled activities all afternoon I hardly had the time! Finally all the things I had put off doing in San Diego were being done now alongside my lovely visitor - beaching it every weekend, visiting Balboa Park, hitting the local festival in Solana, visiting the Birch Aquarium and kicking about La Jolla Coves, visiting the Cabrillo National Monument, changing Fiona's identity - too many things to relate them all accurately. 
Just know it was alot of running around and a lot of well appreciated enjoyment, relaxation and a fair amount of stress, mostly over my Volkswagen Beetle which was still in the process of getting fixed!! That doesn't mean I didn't give it a good go anyhow - the beach awaited after all!
Now I said before that I didn't want to make this blog a lush and flowery depiction of my love life, dramatic as it is, but I do want to say that I have been much much happier and inspired since Fiona's visit. I miss her already, and I can't wait for her to be back again.
There has been some big developments (if you can call them that...) on the other side of my professional life. It was a tiring 3 weeks trying to keep up with my sales position and Fiona's visit, and we spoke very often of my work, how I felt doing it, and the satisfaction it was giving me. Unfortunately, I realised very quickly that there wasn't really much to say about it. I had found myself in a grind of showing up to work on some fabled notion that I should because it'll make me a 'success'. Don't get me wrong, I learned plenty from that sort of job about self-responsibility and the efforts to make great gains in a nearly entrepreneurial setting based on delivering when the pressure is high. Those lessons will stick with me for life. However, over the course of May and June, that 'success' notion started to deteriorate: my sales team, who I derived a lot of inspiration from, was split up and our coach had to withdraw from her position; some of my best coworkers were let go based on performance or personal choices; Hell, I listened to tracks about positivity, sales and success every morning just to justify my job somehow to myself, and try and believe that it was getting my closer to some matured notion of doing whats right for me. The more I thought about it, the more I hated my job. I hated the people I spoke to on the phone and most of them hated me, I hated the abstract idea of success everyone thrived on but was so ill defined, I hated the fickle results driven world of sales and the constant responsibility to make sure you never rock someones boat or affect their mood. No matter how friendly or nice or unique an environment like that is, I found it to be stifling and devoid of a lot of personal contact, because my personality wasn't built to be positive 24/7. I found it exhausting, but I kept on soldiering on because I knew it would grow some part of me and I wasn't about to turn down money. My only friend I really had a proper bond with was the guy I carpooled with to work, Alex, and he really was chasing that success dream - trying to start his own company, working 2 jobs, getting involved in MLM's, all to prove it to himself or something. I tried the better part of 4 months to understand and define what Alex was chasing, but even the relative idea of everyone having different standards was unsatisfying. It was as if people were being told they wanted this thing without even being told what it is. I felt that people weren't chasing their own success, but were going through the motions that people promised would make them successful. All the tapes, our managers, it all seemed like they were selling to us - but it wasn't marketing or service, it was a promise that we would expand and develop financially, personally, or whatever. It did not matter who you were, they seemed to have the solution for you, as did every tape, every book and every manager. As a result I became more cynical, and when my group split I was put on a new team.
My new team leader was actually quite down to Earth, and unlike the rest of the managers, wasn't solely driven on results or empty promises. He treated his team members as people rather than number and gave them the respect of equals. In his eyes, he was no different than us; I admired his management style quite a lot, even if I was only on his team for half a month. After many chats, I told him of my resolve to leave my position and that I would start looking for new work - and he was not at all surprised. We talked about it often that I was good at this job, had the potential to be great, but I gained no satisfaction from it. He told me he supported any decision I would make professionally, and I definitely held him to that. We ended up having a friendly relationship that kept at the company definitely longer than I would've without it. As a culmination of all these things, and my constant feeling of wasting time behind a desk rather than being with Fiona, I quit my job the second I got a notice back from my next career path I've decided to pursue. While everyone but my manager was surprised, they all wished me the best, and I thanked them for the opportunity genuinely. That company did a lot for it's employees - I just couldn't bear to be one. Not for another moment, and certainly not for the rest of my life.
Now that I had bailed on the sales, I am pursuing a job in Law Enforcement. While working in the sales sector, I've come to understand it is absolutely essential to make sure that what you're doing (not just why you're doing it) is a meaningful act. As a telemarketer, I knew my product was good, my company's service was excellent, and we would make a vast improvement in any client we took on - so long as they did their part for their business as well. But there was no satisfaction as I could not see those effects, and everything about the process was an uphill battle. I felt that I was helping people who did not care to be helped, and didn't really appreciate the help either, and all it did was line their pockets with more money, or rob them to put it in ours. It became a matter of the act I did in performing the job was just a means to an end, and that end was primarily a paycheck. I honestly found more satisfaction serving at a bar and seeing people atleast having a good time with a beer in their hand. As a result, I've decided to join the Police because I know that every act I will do during the day would be conducive to both an immediate satisfaction of protecting and serving, as well as get me a financial gain. Moreover, I have the opportunity to move up to more intellectually stimulating positions, and I can work just about anywhere I like in the U.S., and higher up there are opportunities abroad if I am determined to pursue them. To me, this could be the first step in a line of work that could actually be rewarding and long term. I have to say... I am thrilled about it. Seriously.
And while that sounds all good and dandy, and I'm certainly excited about it, I've found that I underestimated the hiring process.... and I've found myself with a 3 month lull until I could be potentially admitted into the program. So... what now? I've taken my first exam and passed, but I still wont have my next til mid August. It was definitely worth it for my two weeks of 100% devoted time to Fiona, but now I have to start from scratch again. Luckily I'm situated in a busy part of town, so there's plenty of places to apply to... but it seems like I'm back to square one again. Time to get back on the horse after an amazing vacation with my girlfriend, and hit the restart button. It's easy to see it as 2 steps forward, 3 steps back, but at least I know I'm moving in the right direction.
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