Whiplash

Yes, I do realize that I’ve been neglecting this blog. A few weeks ago I heard about a blogging service that emails you every day and you just have to hit “reply” to write an entry, and my level of laziness is such that I’d rather have my blog ask me for entries than actually remember to write them on my own. I am just that lazy. It’s a good exercise, though, and I’ve been treating it as a private diary where I can post anything from Twitter- to novel-length and not worry what my readers will think because I’m the only one. That said, I do have a very nice blog with very nice (if not plentiful) readers who would probably like to hear from me once in a while, and since I actually have something to report I will go ahead and do it now:

I’m changing jobs!!

I suppose I can provide some details now that I’ve officially accepted the offer and the wheels are in motion: Starting sometime soon (early June?), I will leave my current role as a marketer and become a recruiter for college/university applicants to Software Company That Pays the Bills, Inc. It’s a discipline change, but many of the skills (teamwork, juggling multiple projects, staying excited despite sleep deprivation) remain the same, and really it’s still kind of marketing, just to a different (and much more skeptical) audience. This is a shift I’ve been thinking about and actively pursuing for several months, and I’m a little apprehensive about the workload and especially the travel (I may have to take a choir hiatus ), but I’d much rather work my butt off for a job I love than pretend to care about a job I merely tolerate. I’m very lucky to have this opportunity—heck, I was lucky to have the first opportunity—and I will keep that in mind when I’m bumped off a flight coming home after weeks of travel and tempted to turn in my frequent flyer miles for a one-way ticket to a deserted island. (Okay, two one-way tickets. Future Husband can come, too.)

I’m thrilled, of course, but now the tricky part begins where I have to figure out how and when to tell the people I currently work with. My manager, his manager, and my manager’s peer who’s been following my job search (and trying to convince me not to leave, bless him) all know, but I’m working on how to tell everyone in person who needs to hear it from me before 1. the news leaks out on its own and 2. my manager sends the official transition email to the organization. One complicating factor that I can’t do anything about is that the Co-Worker Who Hates Everything (and who is not not a reason I’m leaving) just left town for almost two weeks, and poop will hit the fan when she gets broadsided by this news upon her return. I’m actually physically tense about how she’ll react, since she’s been trying to get off this team for years but isn’t getting interviews because people sense a toxic personality/lack of social skills. It’s a shame because she’s actually quite smart and has good ideas that she can execute well on her own; the problem is that she has no sense of how to work well with others and alienates anyone who tries, including our shared manager. And if you’re not with her (like I’ve tried to be, sometimes to my own detriment), you’re dead to her and she won’t hesitate to badmouth you to others. The stress of working with her has brought me to tears multiple times (once in front of my manager’s peer…sigh), so I’m both thrilled to leave and terrified of her reaction. I can’t do anything about that until week after next, though.

Finally, an explanation for the title: One nice feature of my new blogging platform (which has not totally replaced this one, I promise) is that the daily emails include a past post for me to mull over as I work on the current one. Right now I’m getting posts from a month ago, and the one I received last night was all about how miserable I’ve been in my current job and how the best-case scenario was that a recruiting job would just land in my lap so I could live happily ever after. I wouldn’t say this job was quite that easy to get—I did have to interview and there was much gnashing of teeth as I prepared and then waited for a decision—but life has changed a lot in the past month. The job appeared, the team invited me to interview, and they unofficially offered me the job within days of my last interview. This happened fast, even if it seemed excruciatingly slow at the time. (There were some emotions yesterday morning as I nearly convinced myself that the weeklong delay between unofficial and official offer was a sign that they had changed their mind. The official offer materialized within hours.) Lesson learned: Patience! Few things are really as slow as they seem.