After growing up in St. Louis I moved down to Springfield, Missouri for college and never left. For the last 20 years I've been spoiled by a town that was big enough to have multiple options for just about anything, places open later than 9pm and no "real" traffic to have to deal with. (Sorry folks, having to wait through one or two stop light cycles here and there isn't really traffic. Gridlock for hours on a highway is the real deal in my opinion.)
Anyway, since I've been here I quit school multiple times, my original major was "professional bullshitting" (i.e. Marketing and Psychology double major) and ended up finishing with a Bachelors in Physics instead. I at least got to hold continue with some psychology courses through that which was very helpful when upon graduation I got a hired as a Knowledge Engineer for an Artificial Intelligence Company that had opened an office in town working with the school.
This was my dream job in being tasked with interviewing experts that we were hired to develop the AI agent for to either provide "decision support" (gathering mass data into a concise 'suggestion' in a time sensitive manner) or to be more autonomous for tasks they directly wanted completed to take some burden off human controllers (an example would be a car or airplane autopilot plotting a course and detecting objects.) Once I was able to find what data the expert looked at (for autopilot this would include latitude, longitude, altitude, speed, wind speed and direction, etc.) and started building up logic models to feed into the "Core AI program." This program had the basic functional pieces needed to think but these logic models were what defined what it looked at, what goals it needed to achieve and methods to accomplish these goals.
After about five years this company decided to close it's local office here and offered me the option to move many states away and keep working for them. After a lot of thought, I turned this down, choosing to stay here in Springfield. The main reasons being that I had some opportunities at a startup company in town, where helping build up a company was very appealing, and at the time I hadn't told a soul about my feeling of being transgender. While I truly have little doubt on reflection that this company would have been professional and it would have been a non-issue for them, I read many of the executives as being extremely conservative and religious and the idea of being completely alone while trying to 'come out' frankly scared the crap out of me.
Anyway, I ended up working with the startup company for a couple of years, whose main product was a "Software as a Service" highly secure database. I mainly focused on both the project manager role (developing requirements for new projects, keeping the proposed development timeline, etc.) and the job of developing the core marketing strategy. After a while it seemed like I was banging my head against the wall continuously when the CEO wouldn't follow the 'change policy' we put in place to prevent new tasks being added to a current phase of work (sometimes this is necessary, but most were things that could have just been planned into following phases) as well as change his mind on how he was now wanting to market this database. This basically caused the development plan going into about 10 different directions (despite my constant nudging/objections) so, like before I got there, very few actual projects got completed (just lots of small unrelated pieces) and never on time. It wasn't long before I left so he could just run it his way...being incredibly frustrated and seeing no point to plan development and marketing when the necessary pieces to complete never got done.
Pretty much since then my professional life has been in a downward spiral with my latest being at a call center dealing with credit card servicing. Volume phone work like that really sucks your soul out after a while. I felt I constantly got the run around and essentially given incorrect information on various opportunities to get off the phone. When I was at the point of leaving, they made a deal with me to at least get me off the phones a bit each week (doing coaching, mentoring, floor walking, etc.) which when I followed up with them on, all they gave me was an indefinite "I don't know." After a long period of this, on top of waking up each day with my stomach in knots with the thought of going back to that place, I basically had to answer their "I don't know" for them...it wasn't going to happen.
I applied and was essentially hired by another call center (not getting callbacks or job offers from other places) which at least had better pay and supposedly better chances to move up and at least get off the phones. I had ended my two week notice with the old call center, went on a short vacation before starting at the new place, when I got a call needing verification on some website building work I had on my resume. In the end I wasn't able to get back to town to track down what they were needing fast enough and I couldn't start work. This meant a minimum of six months before I could even reapply there.
Since then I've basically done small jobs, side work, Steemit, anything I could find, while putting out countless resumes for decent and not so decent jobs. For a long time I was the type who got hired easily, sometimes on the spot so these constant rejections really took it's toll. I found ways to make ends meet, but all in all it's been just enough to get by. When this happens it's extremely difficult to plan big or far in the future, never quite being sure what would be available.
This is what led me to my move tomorrow back up to St. Louis. I've overall lost hope down here of getting finding anything decent to do or at least something that bearable. So after this weekend I should be getting things setup to live in the city I grew up in, hopefully finding long term career again.
The bulk of my family still lives up there and it will be nice to be able to spend more time with them, my parents, sister, niece and nephew in particular. The down side to this though is that for now my boyfriend will be having to stay down here while I get things together and stabilized up there. I know he has concerns of leaving his family (who live in Springfield) and I'll have to see if him moving is something he decides he wants to do.
I'll be leaving behind many friends here, memories and my home for the last couple decades. This will be an interesting transition for me from here. I'm hopeful finding a career up there and ideally the boyfriend chooses to join me up there in the (I hope) not terrible far off future.
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Walking Down Railroad Tracks