Hi, I’m Sarah, but some people call me Bear.

For the past three years my life was mostly centered around the fact that I commuted a minimum of three hours a day, or to break it down into my driveable chunks, an hour and a half each way. Sure, there were some star-spangled mornings on which I clocked an hour and twenty-five minutes instead, but these didn’t come all that frequently.

I was hyper-vigilant about never complaining about my commute at work, I mean, you know, job security and all, even though it became SUPER annoying to be constantly introduced as “Bear, who commutes an hour and a half each way. Can you believe it?!?” Yes, people. I can effing believe it. Nonetheless, I tried to pass it off as fun.

Every once in a blue moon I would overhear a co-worker complaining about his or her haul into work. Sympathy? I think not…

What transpired was kind of a weird split reality in which I was mostly happy with my job and my work. I mean, as far as gigs go it was good one, but on the flipside I was constantly struggling with the unhealthy demands of getting myself to and fro. Drive 90 minutes to work, sit at desk all day. I never wanted to take a real lunch break because a longer lunch meant more time in the office, which meant I’d be home later. When you feel like you’ve already had a long day that 90 minute drive home feels like a rage-filled shitfest, so I’d eat alone at my desk under the florescent glow, reading articles about how sitting and Vitamin D deficiencies were slowly going to kill me.

When I hit my first workiversary, I was granted one work from home day a week, with the promise of grandfathering in more. This never happened. Instead, my boss seemed very enthusiastic about all the extra time I’d be spending in the office as me and my skills became more in demand. But…just but.

After careful analysis of this list, I came to the final conclusion.

At this point my local job search commenced, and as luck would have it I found something that sounded like it might fit my kitchen sink of a resume. So, I did the thing where you curse your way through creating intelligent sounding bullet points, i.e. updated my resume, and fired it off.

In response, I received a bizarre automated email, apparently not subjected to proofreading, that confirmed my application and actual interest in the job, because taking the time to apply for said job was not adequate as an expression of such. Perhaps only robots had submitted their resumes before me, it’s hard to say.

Begrudgingly, I replied by 9:57 AM the following Monday.

Next, I received a follow-up email to actually schedule an interview from someone much less robotic. This was semi-comforting. The first interview rolled around, and I’m pretty sure it lasted for about 20 minutes.

To sum up the report I gave to Mr. Bear after the interview: “That was fucking weird. They didn’t ask me any actual questions about my experience.” So, I loosely filed the experience under, well, Interview Experience, and moved on. A couple of weeks later, however, I received an email from a human congratulating me on making it to the second round. The catch, however, was being asked to prepare a detailed sample project outline by a given deadline, which I was also cautioned to be prepared to talk about in person. This seemed grossly incongruous with my first interview experience, which is to say that it was very specific, dare I even say venture to call it “thought out”, but the deadline fell on the Monday after Thanksgiving.

“Great!” you’re thinking. “You had a long weekend to complete the assignment.” Not so fast, Eager Beaver. We had planned multiple out of state family visits for the entire week of Thanksgiving, which meant my holiday looked something like this:

For the sake of speeding this story up, sometimes things can surprise you, open up it ways you were afraid they wouldn’t, but sometimes your first gut feeling is dead on. Or, maybe it’s like finding an unlabeled container of moldy cheese in the back of your fridge. Is it feta, long forgotten, or is it perfectly palatable bleu cheese? You don’t really know for sure unless you suck it up and take a bite.

So, yeah. After a muddled interview experience, I was offered the job and I stuck my spoon in the questionable container, and, damn. Anyone got a mint? Because I can barely stand this funky taste in my mouth. I spent a lot of time weighing my odds before accepting the position. Some highlights included: How much longer will I have to wait for another plausible job to open up? Is my commute really that bad? Should I approach my boss about needing more flexibility? But, in the end I tempted the fates of stinky smelling things and tried it anyway.

What has transpired since coming on board, you ask? This is an actual interaction with my actual supervisor:

The above sums up every attempt I’ve made to source work for myself, to make known my ACTUAL skill set, to offer to help, jump in, make coffee. So, in conclusion:

Some days, most days, I’ve pondered whether or not anyone actually read my resume, or if someone said “You know, I don’t really know if we really need to fill this position,” to which someone else replied “Yeah, who knows, but let’s do it anyway.” So, I’ve been floating around in this world of “let’s do it anyway.” And then one day, sitting here at my desk staring out the window (which I’m not complaining about by the way, sitting by a window is amazing), a little voice in my head uttered “Get me outta this box.” As someone who loosely defines herself as “creative”, doing nothing, much less nothing “creative”, can feel surprisingly more stultifying and stressful than being overworked, and thus Bear in the Box was born. Buckle up. If nothing else, it’ll be a colorful ride.