Hard Decision Time...

When the contract job ended, my then boss "S" told me that literally the minute someone on the team gave notice, she would be calling me to offer me a job.  One of my former co-workers gave her notice on a Monday morning in early March, and pretty much by noon the Boss S texted me and said "can we talk?" She wasn't kidding.

She had to post the job internally for 2 weeks and the job goes public today and will be open for 2 weeks for the "interview process...." She's encouraged me to apply for it. And verbally I think the job is mine. I would be the only candidate with the training on the products unless someone from a station that uses the products applies for the job, and that most likely in all the world will not be happening.

And so, I have done that. At about 1pm, I did apply for this old but new job.

I think she loves me, and she has said things to me about my personality, and how  I bring something to the team in the form of care and passion that she values deeply. She was very unhappy to let me go. And I think if she had not had to let me go, my co-worker who left might still be there... and we'd still be working together (which was great) but the fire wouldn't have been lit for her to find a job that she wanted more and to leave.

There are several pros and cons to the decision I may have to make shortly. I'll try and outline them, mostly because I want to remind myself later of whatever my decision was/is, so I can thank Past Me or kick Past Me's ass.

The Old Job:
Pros: 

• I was good at it and I enjoyed it.
• People liked me. I felt happy on my team, and with the other teams.
• Every day was the same, but different. 
• Cache of saying where I worked when people asked me always got a raised eyebrow and a lot of discussion. 
• Doug will be happy to have me back in the car with him. He says his commute is sad and lonely without me. 
• About 15k more a year in pay.
• One work-from-home day a week, which I'd try and match up to Doug's day.

Cons: 

• That Boston Commute. Jesus help me ... I didn't realize how tired I was doing that commute for nearly 2 years between the last 2 jobs. 
• No real chance of any sort of advancement. I'll be in tech support forever. But at nearly age 50 am I a climber or am I happy being a foot soldier?
• Fear of falling into an unhappy rut with the duties of tech support. There were a couple of people (outside of my building, people I had to support) that I was growing to despise. I am afraid my not-so-nice side may come out quickly when I return to that noise. 
• Did I mention the commute?
• Really, the commute is the big con for me. Enough so that I feel it is outweighing all the Pros listed above. 

The New Job 
Pros:

• The Commute for sure. I am a few miles from my front door. I am sleeping in (by "sleeping in" I mean 8am) and getting to my desk before just about everyone. I can work until 5:30 or 6pm, and be home, cooking dinner, in 30 minutes. 
• Location. The town where the job is is just ... superb. Restaurants, beautiful places to go walkies, a river! My office view (see previous posting). I am relaxed. I am rested. I am truly happy.
• Small office, 5 people.
• Very flexible/relaxed work schedule. As long as I'm getting my work done, where I'm doing it isn't super crucial. I can stay at home, as long as I tell everyone. The only day they like for everyone to be here is Monday for a 2pm staff meeting.
• Getting stretched beyond my skill set. I was initially unhappy to find out that I'd be doing certain things (nothing dirty, you perv!) but I'm enjoying learning new software and figuring things out. There are a couple of things that I still have no flipping clue about, but so far I feel like this works as far as work goes. 
• My boss seems like he really likes me and values my opinion. I can talk a big digital strategy game. And I am slowly helping him realize some of his ideas. It would suck to walk away from that kind of a role.

Cons:

• Small office means we're up each other's butts when we're all here.  There is some office drama. I am trying to engage some of my co-workers in giving me feedback about what they want to see change on the site instead of just saying "our website sucks and I hate it." They frustrate me. I'm trying to build a website that makes your life easier. Tell me what you want instead of "it sucks, I hate it."
• Boss sometimes doesn't give any notice of things happening, ie: someone coming in for an interview (for another person's job and they are being laid off...and they're sitting right here instead of on a day where they can say "I am leaving early..." And "Christine you have to edit and layout this book that is 90% finished" or "We have a skype meeting at 2:30." He seems to have his own schedule in his head, and then we just have to kind of drop things. 
• He has some ideas and visions which are great but he needs to hold off on until the new site is built. But he is currently on the phone talking to someone about a shared content sponsorship program, and I have no idea how that fits in with our new site, or old site.
• He seems to lay people off that he suddenly isn't agreeing with. I took someone's job that was doing what I perceived was a great job, but there was something going on there between them and ... she got the boot and I got brought in. It is happening again to someone in the office here (senior editor).  So he tells me I'm doing a great job, loves my ideas, very encouraging... but in 8 weeks will that be the same? 
• Location is making me lazy. I promised myself I'd get up and go to the gym. I've done that once in nearly 2 months.

So yeah. Those are the pros and cons.  Doug said the money alone is enough to make the decision. He wants to move closer to Boston after Geoff graduates, maybe in the fall or next spring, so he thinks I need to put on my big girl pants and go back to the job in Boston.

I'm sure the money will be hugely helpful. We could buy a car. We could pay for both kids to take classes. Money is nice.

I'm just not sure that walking away from this job before we get the sites rebuilt and optimized and rolled out is something I'm comfortable doing. I feel awful about the concept. But if I choose to stay here, and then find out I'm being ousted in say June or July because he has a change of heart about how he thinks the job is going, that will suck (sounds all very Alice in Wonderland, I know).

a picture of me, for a change...

In my office, sometimes I'm the only one here. People work from home,  a lot. I can work from home, and I have once or twice.

One particular day, I found myself alone here at my desk. I was a bit ADHD and very cold. So I took this picture of myself.

I normally do not like pictures of myself. I look fat and stupid with a big Peter Griffin double chin so the scarf helped out this one a lot. I put this through a filter on Instagram, and it caught the sun coming through the window behind me. The black and white helped out my skin tone.

The only thing I really would have liked to have done is  blend out the circles under my eyes... but this was the day after Jack died, and i think it holds a certain sadness.

Additionally, I've always liked my nose, and my skinny irish lips look cute.

So... I like this photo.

The J.O.B. Job

My contract at work didn't get renewed at the end of January. I had gotten to the point where I was pretty solid on the support I was providing, and learning still. Which is always good. I felt like 80% of the stuff coming into the helpdesk was a drop kick done deal that I could answer, 10% was stuff I had to question and then 10% stuff that didn't overlap with me.

So feeling safe and happy was good. I also had gotten to the point where there were a few people (out side of our building, people who sent in help desk requests) that I wanted to never hear from again. Two maybe. Which is a tiny fraction of the people I had to deal with on a regular basis.  I suppose that is bound to happen in help desk work.

When I knew they weren't renewing my contract, I started looking for a new job and I secured one, which started one month ago yesterday (a short month, but a calendar month nonetheless). It is very close to home, only a few miles and a few minutes of a commute. The view is outstanding... and it is hard some days for me to focus when I get to sit here and gaze out upon the gorgeousness of the Merrimack River.

It is kind of a good thing that my job ended when it did because the commuting into Boston situation was sort of impossible for a couple of weeks, and for some is still impossible. Doug said it took him over 3 hours some days to get into work. And if he had thought he'd put me on the T on his side of the Charles River to try to get to my side of the Charles River, more often than not I'd pretty much just be stranded because the T essentially ceased to be.

February 2015 goes down in history as a commuter's nightmare. And from the people I'm still in touch with at the old office, it sounds like the city has just given up totally, and the hope is that spring will just melt the snow away.

My sanity rejoices for this commute, and being here. And I can make a nice big dinner and pour a cocktail or pop open a bear for my road warrior husband when he finally gets home long after 7:30pm. The poor kid.

So the job. My title is Web Manager. Sounds reasonable. It is a 5 person office. I had two half-days with the girl I replaced. The replacing was awkward, I think there was a money issue or personality issue or something between her and the boss... and he decided to get rid of her and bring in someone else... She's lovely, really. And in real life she and I would be best nerd friends ever. She trained me to the best of her ability with short time of my being here, but I feel that I really needed her for a week. I'm trying to make do. Or is it make due? Anyway.

I got hired to do a job that I thought was as simple as updating text in a newsletter (InDesign) templated by someone else, saving it for PDF posting online, and updating content on the website. I quickly found out that my job entails:

• updating the templated newsletters (3)
• updating that content on the websites (3) 
• proofreading and editing and making content updates to a book that was supposed to be published in December (uh.... okay?) 
• designing marketing collateral for print in In Design (designed it, but the printers come back with blah blah blah spot color cmyk bleed blah blah blah problem blah blah blah) 
• posting tests/quizzes on a Moodle site (piece of crap and a half. Moodle is from Satan)
• posting products (like the book!) 
• project managing a big rehab of our site(s) with a company out of NH.

Outlining and detailing all the challenges and house fires I've had to do since starting here does no good. I am boring you to death as it is, I'm sure. I have posted the newsletters for this month (it only took me 4 weeks to do it), I have revised, tweaked and fixed this book a million times and yet the senior editor still keeps coming back with "oh, I missed this one thing can you fix it?" So it just went to the printer for proof today. We are getting ready for the March content. We're talking about site redesign and what we want to see in the new layout on the User Experience front and back end. I drew up a little mock-up for the front page of the site and the office manager loves it. We'll see if anyone else agrees. I just realized I need to post the one-off "a la carte" tests for each the newsletters and the instructions on how to do that are so bat-shit crazy I can't even.

The literal saving grace is that everyone here is cool. So cool. There is no yelling. There has been panic, and the 4 co-workers I have who I deal with most all have great senses of humor, so it is super nice. We joke around about needing valium or heroin to get through the crisis du jour.

And the view. The view is pretty sweet...

This is the view from my office window.

I am longing for the snow to be gone, and walkies to happen.

And my co-worker has this dog.

She came to visit and it made me very happy.