This one's for you, Alicia! I knew it had been a while since my last post, and I looked and it's been a month and a half. Oops! Really, I've had time to do it, it's just more of a motivation thing...it's been lacking in many areas.
On Valentine's Day I started my new job with Liberty Mutual Surety, as a Field Product Line Underwriter. I'm doing basically the same thing as I was in Iowa, just a different company (huge! 45,000 employees!) and some different procedural approaches than what I'm used to. I mostly handle the state of Texas, with northern Arkansas for my territory. The thing that's taking some getting used to is the frequent travel and agency visits in my territory. At Merchants, we were required to travel once a quarter, and with all the industry events I went to, I ended up getting out for marketing type events about 7 or 8 times a year.
Now, with this job I'll be getting out almost every other week or so. It's encouraged to get out of the office to bring a box of doughnuts to an agency, take them out to lunch or to go demo a company product for them. While my skin crawls at having to be a cheerleader for the company (marketing...blah), it is what I know how to do and I'm not in the mood for a career change. Really, the whole way I fell into this job is pretty cool and I have to remind myself of it often to validate why I'm here. It has been a tough transition from the mentality "let's have a family and I'll stay at home" to "I'll work full time away from home and not be anywhere close to having a family." Argggh! I've had a few rough weeks of really duking this transition out, but I know this job is where I'm suppose to be right now, as much as I fight it.
I started as a temp in the claims department for Liberty Mutual. While I was there, one of the commercial underwriters quit to go to a competitor. I took that opportunity to ask the manager if she planned to replace the position and told her about my qualifications. She was dumbstruck. For my friends reading this that know the surety industry, we know its a quirky and unique industry. Most people, when they hear the word "bond and surety," go blank faced. Yeah, I bet you guys reading this did too! Anyway, we'll just say finding a job in this industry has the same chance as a monkey morphing into a human....impossible! (well, I guess some people say it's been done, but...)
So, I went through the interview process, waited and waited some more. All the while, I found out that 1)the hiring manager went to the University of Iowa and worked with my manager at Merchants. Highly weird and ironic. How does that happen? 2) The regional manager married an Iowa girl and they visit Iowa all the time. 3) One of the contract underwriters went to UNI, my university, worked at my previous company AND his wife volunteered at the same ranch in Charles City, IA my mom does. This is giving me chills! Finally, 4) there is another underwriter from Merchants I kind of knew that now works for Liberty in an office near Austin.
Put all those factors together and you have a recipe for super ironic and a blaring-horns-obvious sign that this is where I'm suppose to be. It's so amazing to think of all the factors in this transition from my temp job to my now permanent job. I do enjoy being back in the underwriting world, as much as I'd prefer to have a family and stay at home. But, this is where God wants me right now, and he HAS made it very obvious. It's been great to begin new friendships and expand my world, so to speak beyond our neighborhood and church family.
I'm still holding out hope for a family some day and we are slowly working towards diagnoses and treatment for us. The toughest part is that we have no guarantee that we'll ever have our own biological family, but Paul and I have grown so much closer and stronger as a couple through this. We look forward to what God has in store for us through this trial.
No comments:
Post a Comment