It sounds like taking a break from the pottery class was a good idea. That's too bad that they've gotten so slow about firing your pieces though, especially to the point of sitting around a class with nothing to do. That doesn't seem very well-run or professional on their part.

I don't envy you having to figure out all the software licensing issues for that company ! The whole thing here felt really crazy. I should have been able to just call up our helpdesk, and have them figure it out... but the helpdesk really hasn't been helpful for software that's not part of the standard build (understandably). And our "buying software" people seem to be completely different than the helpdesk people. And, of course, nobody wants you to actually *contact* them - it's all through online forms and whatnot, mostly. I lucked out and had an email address from somebody that helped me with the original purchase of this software (which was a whole other nightmare, since the company hadn't yet figured out how to deal with the new "pay by the year" licenses.)

Good luck shifting the burden back to the other department for the tedious work, I fully support that plan and will keep my fingers crossed that it goes smoothly!

I hope all the new work leads to good things, but I'm not feeling optimistic (surprise, surprise). I talked to my boss about a project today, one of the concepts we did that we're going to get to build (yay! Exciting!). He still seems to be saying that he doesn't want me to do the IA for it... he said that I'm "too valuable" doing the research - i.e. researching the external companies and putting together those stupid power-point presentations!!!!! Because, and I swear to you he said this, "nobody else can do this".

I think he's grudgingly going to let me work with one of the graphic designers who supposedly also does IA, although she really, really doesn't. She was supposed to, for another project (ugh, that I was supposed to be on and got taken off of, b/c she's a contractor and needed "billable hours"). The graphics guy who worked with her ended up having to take over the IA and have her just do graphics.

Such a mess. I think I'd like to find an in-person group to talk about careers, finding what you want to do, struggles with jobs. I wonder if there are groups like that, and if it would be helpful?

And - that's too funny that you're getting recruited for jobs, when you don't really want a job!