The Words - An Autobiography

Here We Are, Here We'll Stay

I intended to find a new place for us to live, then some space to house my new ventures, while my wife worked her way through her list of interviews. We brought minimal belongings, a few suitcases, notebook computers, and a single guitar – leaving several others with my mother. We came fully committed to staying since we'd left ourselves little option. We had no place to return. We'd given up our apartment and sold the furniture we'd accumulated over the past seven years. We'd even sold our cars. We were dropped at our hotel by a taxi, which my wife suddenly realized she would also be dependent upon for transportation to her interviews.

She was aflutter with nerves and anxiety, concerned about, "What do we do if I don't receive an offer. You didn't complete your Ph.D., don't have a job, if my interviews don't produce an offer, I won't one either...." Our decision to show up and let our chips fall where they would suddenly felt far too compulsive. "We should have been more rigorous in thinking things through."

"Please, relax," I urged her, generally not the best approach to achieving that result but reminding her that we currently had more money than either of us had ever dreamed possible did appear to calm her some. "We have our hotel bill covered, even if we extend our stay here a few years, room service included." Earning a smile. "Plus, I have a portfolio filled with legal documents proving that I am currently the sole stockholder of two corporations not yet worth a dime."

"Yeah," she conceded, with a laugh, "That is all true."

Despite her determined fixation to accomplish what any of her university peers would have insisted was ludicrous, like myself, my wife was her own worst critic and often found herself overwhelmed by anxiety and self-doubt. Fortunately, when self-confidence wavered for either of us, we were also the most steadfast believers in one another. Still, despite my continual assurances, she appeared genuinely surprised when the offers began arriving one after another before the end of our first week, with another entire week of interviews scheduled for the week to follow.

I reminded her once again what I'd said when we'd begun making our plans, "None of these companies would have gone to such lengths to recruit you and bring you across the country for interviews if they hadn't intended to make you an offer. These interviews aren't so much for you to convince them that they should hire you, as they are a face-to-face opportunity for them to make their pitch and sell you on why you should come work for them."

By the end of the week, she had official offers from her first three interviews, with others from the rest to arrive over the weekend. I was sure the documents for these and the accompanying employment contracts had been waiting on someone's hard drive, complete, but for a final determination of compensation to be negotiated, signatures, and dates.

I also knew my wife had likely determined which offer she'd accept months before we departed. That coming from the company where she'd scheduled her initial interview. She called them immediately to accept. They were thrilled to have her. "And should be," I added. All the others also extending offers were disappointed to learn that she'd been lured and landed by the competition, as were those she called to cancel her upcoming interviews the following week. Was there anything they could do to change her mind? More money? They could offer her a significantly higher starting salary if that were the only issue. And those whose interviews she'd canceled asked: Wouldn't she at least like to hear what they had to offer? No, she'd been convinced in advance by all she'd read that her choice was conducting research much closer to what she ultimately intended to do than the others. No one, of course, was openly engaged in the specific research she ultimately intended to do, or she'd have been pounding on their door, demanding that they let her in. If she'd discovered that there were no funds left in a research grant to pay another researcher, we had more than enough in the bank to cover what would have been her salary for the next few years, and she knew that I'd agree. The research she ultimately intended was the entire point of our venture.