A New Commute

Friday, May 15th, was my last day working at Capital Real Estate Advisors (CRA). I worked there almost 18 months, and overall it was a good experience. I learned a great deal about the brokerage side of the commercial real estate industry, and that was definitely one of my original desires in taking the job in the first place. But looking at the big picture, there were several reasons why it was not a good fit for me, not the least of which was an income limited by a disastrous economy and real estate market. For the most part I enjoyed working there and established some relationships I'm sure I'll maintain for years to come, but when my income was further curtailed at the beginning of the year, I began actively looking for a new opportunity.

Thankfully, after many weeks of beating the bushes in the challenging job market that exists these days, I saw an online job posting that caught my eye. The position was in real estate, and the experience and qualifications required dealt with data, information, and analytics. Since those facets comprised much of my job description at CoStar in Maryland, I submitted my resume & application. The very next day I got a call from the HR person, a day later I had a phone interview with the hiring Senior Vice President, and a few days later I was at their office in Pasadena for a sit-down interview with two SVPs and the Managing Director of the Pasadena office. Lender Processing Services provides residential mortgage processing services and analytics/statistics to the banking and lending industry. They recently created a new position titled as Senior Data Quality Analyst to act as the key project manager and liaison between the Data group (in Pasadena) and the Analytics group (in San Diego). About a week after my interview, I got a call with the formal job offer (with a salary more than 50% more than what I was guaranteed at CRA) and I accepted it on the spot. My main base will be in Pasadena, but I will be heading down to San Diego a few times each month as part of my responsibilities.

My first two weeks have gone really well. My first week was entirely in Pasadena spent with a lot of the typical new-employee-set-up kind of things, but also spending a good deal of time on a couple of projects they threw at me right out of the gate. This past week I drove down to San Diego for the first time and got set up down there, as well as meeting with my boss a few times and learning some software from the IT/Programming group. The most challenging part of my LPS time so far was the 3.5-hour drive home from San Diego on Thursday evening through some nasty LA traffic.

But these are the facts of the recent events. I'm really writing this post to talk about the timing of the transition. As mentioned previously, my lack of sufficient income was the main reason I began looking for a new job. And not only was I basically underemployed, neither Elisa nor I had health or any other benefits through our jobs, so we were paying out-of-pocket for our health insurance - a significant drain on our already tight budget. Furthermore, Elisa's COBRA health insurance was set to expire at the end of June, and our recent effort to obtain independent health insurance for her had failed due to her pre-existing health condition (in remission though it has been for many years). So, needless to say, the timing of this was exceptionally fortuitous. Indeed, if you wanted to say God was at work here, I couldn't argue with you.

Looking forward, Elisa has some potential opportunities to finally obtain a full-time teaching position for this fall. Unfortunately we won't know the final verdict on those for at least another month, so we've just got to hold our breath and cross our fingers that one of those will work out. We remain cautiously optimistic about things, but we could really use some more good fortune on the professional front in order to feel solid about our future.

Finally, let me share a quick story about the transition that kind of explains it all for me. At CRA, my computer had the Pandora application, which essentially is an online radio station that plays only music that I like. On my final day, the last song to play before I shut down for the last time was the '80s hit "Sara Smile" by Hall & Oates. And it immediately hit home: Every major decision I make is made in order to make Sara (Sue) smile, to make sure she is as happy as possible. I'm not perfect in this quest, but I try my best, and hopefully her life will have a lot more laughter than tears. We'll see what the future holds.