Well that’s nice: 5 good things 19.3.18

• Survived another birthday! Was super excited to think it’s Elf’s last kid-style party, as she’s agreed to celebrate differently from next year. Movies or sleepovers with two best friends, rather than games and balloons with 8 of them, sort of thing. Told A how wonderful it was to be able to count my remaining kids’ parties on the fingers of one hand. A reacted with great distress; is weirdly resistant to ending kids’ parties. Doesn’t want kids to grow up too fast or some such. Secretly bloody loves the parties. Weirdo.
• Last week’s surprise job interview (did not expect a response to that particular application), it turns out, was a direct result of applying for something actually quite outside my experience. See, I’ve been broadening my search; not consciously, it’s just a consequence of how job searches work these days: you have to put the right keywords in and hope for the best. So I found only “editor” or “writer” jobs. (Which is of course my actual background, except not necessarily in the specific contexts that are advertised, ie, either German language publishing or corporate stuff.) But! You subscribe to the job search, you get constant lists of jobs emailed to you. Jobs that almost certainly aren’t remotely suitable, but if you tend to click on a bunch of stuff anyway – out of curiosity and desperation – the algorithm learns from that, and starts sending you all kinds of jobs that are even further removed from what you can actually do… but maybe also some things that you wouldn’t have found otherwise but are sort of qualified for, if you’re feeling ballsy? Which is what happened this month. And – lesson in here somewhere – my background in Not The Actual Job was really attractive to the hiring manager, because they have a vague need for my specific skills, even though they’re not directly part of the job advertised. Pure luck! (And some of the specific skills the ad did call for, like “excellent German”, are really not necessary. Turns out.)* Meanwhile I have another interview lined up this week. It’s all happening, until it doesn’t, but hey, progress?
• Also good for the ego last week: getting a new freelance reporting gig (not by any means an exciting one, but still), and having my latest pattern launch very well received. With fulsome praise coming from one particular designer I respect highly. Really, is there anything better than a compliment from someone you admire?
• Setting this out here because it’s interesting as well as awesome: sales of that pattern alone have already made March my best sales month ever. In just four days. Mind you… even for these top months, we’re only talking a few hundred euro at most; usually my sales are in double digits. But the second biggest month was November last year, with the Giftalong. I find it encouraging that three of my top 5 months were in the last half-year.
• A sudden weirdness: in-laws offering to help us buy a house around the corner from them. It is lovely of them to think of us, and very generous to offer, and being so close to grandparents would be lovely… but it would be very very far from all the rest of my so painstakingly built up network, and probably impractical for A to cycle to work any more (this is a Big Deal, he hates commuting by car or train), and the actual house is smol and weird. FIL presented it as a “Denksportaufgabe” (thought exercise), but it’s really quite a challenging one. (But so sweet that they want their grandkids right there. So sweet.)

* Obviously still waiting to hear but I really would quite like this job, so hold thumbs everyone…