I Just Got a Job Offer!!

No, not the prison ministry. I heard back from them and the board will be deciding later this month. I think they're just quite deliberate about their actions (i.e. quite slow.) Ultimately, I will work for them. If they don't hire me, I'll clear space in my schedule and work for them anyway. Then they'll wind up hiring me, and I'll be helping them.

I've used this strategy several times and it's astonishingly rewarding. It's amazing how you can get good results simply by being tenacious. In fact, I got my grantwriting breaks by just continuing to show up at a nonprofit I had worked for in a different capacity and being so helpful and flexible that I was essentially working for free. Then when a job came up, I was the first one they thought of.

Optimism, competence, generosity, friendliness and persistence - those qualities pay off in every way.

Anyway, the offer was from one of the board members at Sunday's meeting. He's a physician who's starting a daycare for developmentally disabled toddlers, and he wanted me to be the Center's Director!!

A proper job with a steady salary, a title, an office and benefits. Helping families and their children. I'm so in with his vision. The way to help people stay out of prison is to invest in children's healthy development.

Based on my resume and that meeting, he thought I would be ideal. And in many ways, I would. He doesn't even know that because I've spent the last 3 and 1/2 years tutoring one of my best friends through her early childhood education classes, I've basically done the whole ECE program myself, as far as knowledge goes.

But I already have a proper job, just of a different sort.

It was with real regret that I turned the offer down. Because I had been completely upfront when we met, he accepted my reasons. But he still retained me to do some grant research for him, finding out how to get some city and county funding. And he left open the possibility of working in an administrative capacity only in the future, which might be workable. It would be rewarding to help put together curricula and interventions for children and families in need.

Hmm... see. A whole new career for the next five decades.