Tomorrow marks the start of the fourth week of my new job. I am yet to be escorted out of the building without an entry pass, but I am very pleased to say that this is the first job that I've ever had whereupon waking up, I am so pleased to get up out of bed and and commute into the office.
Speaking of the commute - it isn't nearly as brutal as I thought it would be. I have come to terms with taking an umbrella on days when rain is forecast, and how to deal with button up shirts on Monday to Thursday, even if the office has a "Wear whatever makes you comfortable" dress code, which sees my coworkers dressed in a range of workout wear, corporate attire, and T-shirts + jeans on any given day.
I started in a group of five new employees, and we've all bonded pretty well. Two of my coworkers used to work together almost two decades ago, and were both delighted to see each other. I've managed to get on well with both of them. The other two are quiet and reserved type, but they are slowly coming out of their shell as time wears on and we Stockholm ourselves together in an office space that is incredibly collaborative, fun, and so supportive.
People have either worked in this place for ten minutes or 100 years. There's one bloke at workplace who has the title of "its his first job", which reflects just how well the place values its employees.
The office is modern, has good amenities (an onsite gym!) and is about a 10-15 minute walk from the train station, depending on how fast I want to walk. Every second Friday, our little group of new starters gets together for a little lunch order and a few days ago, we all shared some sushi. Good bonding, and we're all learning new things.
The work is interesting, varied, and the onboarding experience is the best I could have hoped for. There are still some procedural bits and pieces that we're each learning, but there is such incredible support around the new team that it is a genuine joy to ask people questions, as they're all so very supportive, even amid their own workload.
While my initial tenure is for a twelve month contract, I really do want this job to be my last job, as the company has just in the last week released a new corporate plan, which even with my limited understanding of the lay of the land for the organisation architects both a sustainable and continually improving process that leads to not only corporate responsibility and sustainability, but positive impacts to people who are both customers and non-customers of the company.
I'm excited by the future, and I've not been drinking the kool-aid.
I have been catching the train to work each and every day, except for the one day when some Australian drongo decided to drive their car onto the train tracks. I had already started making a friend at the train station, who I converse with every morning, and we decided to drive to a bus-station further down the line to get to work on that particular day.
He's grateful for someone to chat to so early in the morning, and it adds another semblance of accountability to my morning routine to ensure I get to work on time. When the day is over, I throw my laptop, keyboard, mouse, and mousepad into my back pack, and have learned the exact timings of the pedestrian crossings and train platforms to make sure I get home as early as possible to make it back into the gym, or in the case of the last few days, through the most recent wedding I photographed.
My commute is full of music, reading, or writing, and I think that my next phone might by a tablet style folding phone to give me increased flexibility for these tasks, as the commute now makes up about two hours of my day. From waking up to getting home, there's a 12 hour window, so I am maximizing the time as best as I can.
I've limited my reddit app on my phone to 10 minutes, and that forces me to then go and pursue a book, or open my writing app and continue to work on my fiction, or intently listen to some music on my noise cancelling headphones, or alternatively, listen to the mechanical narration of novels which I am enjoying experiencing.
At the end of this week, they're throwing a Christmas party in the office. My first annual leave has been approved (the night after The Last Dinner Party concert I'm attending in January, and the night after the Lacuna Coil concert I'm attending in February) and I am really thoroughly impressed with the character and personality and genuine openness of everyone in the office.
With luck, my contract will transition into a permanent role - and from there, I can work out my days at this place of employment, which when I am trained, will see 2 days from the office, and three days from home, which if you ask me, is a mighty fine balance - particularly given the quality of the people that sit in the office.