The Stumbling Stepmom

Guess what! I figured out how to add pictures to my posts!

So the fall of 2019 found me graduating from Miller Motte College with my medical assistant and phlebotomy licenses (who knew I would enjoy drawing blood so much?). I was still living in North Carolina, and loving every minute of it. My apartment was only 10 minutes from the beach and one of my best friends lived only four hours away so we visited back and forth a lot. My patriotic heart was surrounded by so much American history that I had only just started to explore. I loved living on the East Coast, and like I said in a previous post, I had no plans to move back West anytime soon, if at all.

My parents and sister came up for my graduation that October. It was held on the beautiful campus of the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. We had a great time! We went to the state fair in Raleigh, which just happened to be going the weekend they flew in. Of course we also had to go to the beach, and we visited some of the historical sites around the area.

It was a fun and exciting time. I had changed career paths in my mid-40s with some trepidation, and now suddenly the world was my oyster again. I had made sure to take the national tests for both medical assisting and phlebotomy, ensuring that I could apply for jobs anywhere in the United States. I had completed an externship at a local lab in Wilmington during my schooling and they were able to hire me on a part-time basis when I graduated. I loved drawing blood and running the tests on the samples before sending them out for processing. It was a whole new world to me. Unfortunately, the lab I was working in didn’t have any full-time openings and was small enough that there wouldn’t be any opening up any time soon, so the job hunt began! I put in over 100 applications all across the South, East, and Midwest. I applied to jobs in Virginia, Washington, D.C., Florida, Georgia, Boston, Wisconsin, all over North Carolina and Virginia, and many other states. I had a few interviews but not much more. While waiting for more interviews and still looking for job openings in all those areas, I had the thought that I should apply for some jobs in Utah. I dismissed the idea several times but it kept coming back. So I reluctantly submitted two applications in Utah.

By this time it was December and I was planning on flying to Utah for a few days, then driving home to Arizona with my sister for Christmas. A week or so before my flight, I received a call from one of the jobs in Utah requesting an interview. I told them that I was currently living in North Carolina but would be in Utah for a few days, so we set up an interview. Not thinking too much about it, I bought presents and packed, getting ready for my trip.

I went to the interview the day after I flew in and then my sister and I drove home for Christmas. Crazy enough, a few days later the company called offering me a full-time job as a medical assistant, complete with benefits. I was blown away. I had put in over 100 applications on the East Coast and still hadn’t found a job. I put in two applications in Utah and got a job immediately. Suddenly I had a decision to make. A decision, though I didn’t know it at the time, that would change the very course of my life.