MACULAR DEGENERATION time he sought a new position, but I marveled at how well he navigated his way through the networking meetings, social media sites and online applications. He endured faceto-face, telephone and even Skype interviews and enlisted the help of a job coach. And I wasn’t the only one impressed with Greg’s dedication to finding employment. A networking colleague of his recommended that Marcia Heroux Pounds, a columnist at the South Florida Sun Sentinel, interview Greg about his search, and subsequently she included some of his tips in her recently published book titled, “I Found a Job!” In her book Pounds mentions that Greg’s motto through the whole job-seeking process was “it is what it is.” “I didn’t overanalyze my presentation to employers,” states Greg in the book. “If an employer didn’t like me then I probably wasn’t the right choice.” In this book Greg also comments that job hunters “have to be patient and really know the position they want.” Since Greg was focused on finding the job that was the right fit, we spent more than a year living in what I called “limbo”. We didn’t plan vacations, do home improvement projects or make any large purchases. And as the months went by we also realized Greg had to look outside Rochester for his next job opportunity. After 14 months he landed a marketing director position at a high-tech firm in Dayton, Ohio. He started the new job in April 2010 and commuted back and forth on weekends until the end of August when we followed the moving van out of Rochester. During those in-between months, I attended goodbye parties, conducted garage sales, watched painters and repairmen prepare my home for the real estate market and boxed up countless memories. I wondered how I was going to bear leaving the home and life that I loved.
After the movers unloaded our belongings at our new home in Dayton and I watched the moving van drive away, I felt like a kid on the first day at a new school. I had butterflies in my stomach and tears welling up in my eyes. For a few weeks I was able to distract myself with emptying boxes, shopping for new furniture and figuring out how to get from point A to point B. However, when my “to do” list started to dwindle, I realized it was time to begin working to build a new life in Dayton, and it wasn’t going to be easy. We had moved away from Rochester a couple times before, but this experience felt totally different. This time we didn’t have any children with us to help break the ice with strangers and fill our days with school and sports activities. I have decided to give this strange, new situation a positive label …we are “reinventing” ourselves. With about five months under our belts, I can report that there are many signs that this may turn out to be one of the most fascinating, inspiring, and revitalizing moves of our lifetime. Greg loves his new job and we adore our house and neighborhood. We joined a gym and are getting fit together for the first time in our lives. I have found a very warm and welcoming church community, an active Penn State (my alma mater) alumni club and new friends who enjoy so many of my favorite pastimes…. walking, shopping and eating! Of course there are days when I long to go on a Wegmans shopping spree, taste an Abbott’s frozen custard or walk on the Charlotte pier. It is then that I use my cell phone, Facebook page or email to connect with those I love and miss back home. I could not have survived this move without their encouragement, humor and updates on the latest Rochester news and weather. There is something else that keeps me going on those days when I feel a bit homesick — I daydream about retiring someday, back in Rochester!
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