Hmmm

My day to day diary as a real-estate agent:

One of the things that’s interesting about being a real estate agent is putting out signs:

1. Exercise! It’s a reasonable number of steps (and light lifting) placing signs!
2. It’s weird seeing my name on a sign board.
3. Sign placement? Where should I put signs?
4. Thick skin. I can’t be self conscious about walking out into the middle of a busy street and fumbling with my signs 🙂 Today there must have been 100 cars that passed me by as I placed this sign.
5. Worry. Specifically, car worry. I don’t worry about my car so much, but when lifting the signs in and out of Larissa’s car I do worry (as an accident prone person) about scratching her car 🙂
6. Remembering signs. A week ago I was driving on an arterial by one of my previous open houses and there was my sign sitting out there. I’d forgotten it and it was just sitting there. Normally I count the signs in then out, but I’d forgotten that on a whim I’d put out an extra sign. For two days, in the rain, it had just been sitting there forgotten.
7. Sweating. I perspire a lot. So I can’t wear a jacket when putting out signs or I’ll sweat in my nice shirt. The problem with this is that you may have heard somewhere that it rains sometimes in Seattle, so I have to risk getting drenched by rain so I don’t get drenched by sweat.
8. Signs in the car. Imagine it’s 4:30 pm. You’ve been working since early and been lifting signs out and in of the car and hosting dozens of curious strangers through another person’s house then commuting back home through weekend traffic. And there the signs are, in the back of the car, staring at you needing to be lifted out and stowed away. It’s soooooo tempting to just leave the signs in the car. But that means driving around with big heavy gas-guzzling signs with no rooms for groceries or family. So the signs must be lifted out and placed in a dry place for another few days. As a proud procrastinator, this is the most challenging part of an open house for sure — taking the signs out of the car at the end of the day. Some day I hope to be wealthy enough that I just leave the signs where I placed them at the beginning of the day and then just using new signs the following week, but 1. I’m not wealthy enough for that (signs are expensive) and 2. that might be considered littering/wasteful by some 🙂

Anyway. There are many things I’m learning and experiencing about being a real estate agent here in Seattle. Signs are one of them.