There's something empowering about putting on a nice sleek black pant suit. Perhaps it's because I've lived makeup-less in tshirts, leggings, jeans and sweatshirts for the past couple of years that the transition is so stark when I see myself dressed up in work gear again. The transformation, I admit, is a nice welcome after being unemployed for so long but personally, I like living in casual wear. So what if I liked being a sloth?

No, I don't have a job yet. Just went on some interviews, both big and small recently and it was so overwhelmingly different for me to be thinking "corporate" again. To tell you the truth, I can't quite speak the lingo of the working world much anymore. During this hiatus, my mind has turned into webmush and to bring back all the vocabulary of "synergy, team player, self starter, results oriented, prioritize, multi task, etc etc" is so foreign to me. I had to literally re-program myself in recent days.

It seems like no matter how much one prepares for an interview, they never seem to really ask you anything that you're prepped for. In fact, in an interview on Wednesday, someone asked me what my "wishlist" was for a potential career opp at their company and all I could conjure up was my Amazon wishlist.

A travesty, I tell you.

Then they asked if I had taken an opportunity to look at their Financial Statement for the last quarter on their website and if I had done any due diligence on it. Due diligence? That sounded very familiar. Of course it does, I was doing that stuff 3-4 years ago but the only due diligence I've been doing in recent years has been analyzing new web journals and wondering if I should link that site or not! :p

I'm not a total loss though. I answered the questions to the best of my knowledge and although I felt like 22 again, interviewing for my first job out of college, I finally got the nervousness out of my system and made a positive impression. I think. It's awkward though. You feel tongue tied, you feel like your mind is cloudy, you feel like you're not quite as sharp anymore. But I'm sure it's just a feeling that will fade after I've been wading with the sharks again.

It's not difficult explaining the reason why I haven't worked in nearly two years but it was difficult to sell myself back into the job market. People seem to think you've drifted off to Gilligan's Island after you've been unemployed for sometime and that you're not quite as up to date with the working world. Sure, there may be an ounce of truth to that but it doesn't change my skill set nor my qualifications. And even though I've had time off, I don't think I ought to climb the corporate ladder beginning from the bottom rung again. No No No.

I'm out.