Annoyance and Anticipation: Or, A New Job for Me!

I've been woefully neglectful of this blog - and if there's anyone reading out there, I do apologize for being so absent. I could chalk it up to the holidays, though I've done little more for the holidays than sit in a car or stuff some food in my face. I've hardly even done any real gift shopping yet. Part of that has been due to the fact my schedule for the last few months has been a series of trips, for work and for pleasure, and so getting through each trip has been, in and of itself, a bit of a mini-project, and the accumulation of each of those projects has left me feeling that Christmas and New Year are both much further away than the calendar now shows me they are.

But it's all been a good busy, and it's led me to a good place: a new job. A couple posts back, I said I'd gotten an interview with a new company, and lo and behold, this company has now hired me. I could not be more thrilled to have a new challenge ahead of me and to learn a lot of new things -- not the least of which will be how a different company works. I was fortunate or lucky enough that my new company seems to recognize both some instrinsic value in me as well as the promise of future things to come. They offered me more money than I make today (always a plus), they have hired me into a position in which I will have no direct management responsibilities (always an enormous plus), and they have talked both seriously and specifically about the various options they see ahead for me in their firm. Alas, they could not meet my current vacation benefit, but I have to remind myself that vacation from an enjoyable job/company may be less of a necessity than it has been from a hated job/company, and something like this should not have been considered a deal-breaker. So it wasn't, and I accepted, and as of today, I tendered my resignation from my company of the past 10 years.

While I did not expect the walls to come crumbling down or for executives who barely noticed I existed before to suddenly call me, pleading with me to stay, I expected a little more than I got today. While my team and colleagues have not yet been informed of my departure, several executives with whom I interact daily have. And I got bupkus. My direct boss has been nothing short of fantastic, and because she and I have a very solid relationship, I felt free to talk to her about my resignation before submitting it. She was effusive about how very valuable I was to my company, and how I needed to take this opportunity, this power, that comes with having an offer in hand and design the job of my dreams -- she felt certain I'd be in a very strong negotiating position to get it and if the response from my company was negative, I still had this exciting new offer elsewhere to pursue. I spent the weekend thinking about it all very deliberately. I even sketched out my "fantasy" job.

And I could not do it.

I just felt like one more pitch, towards executives I do not respect, for a product I only feel half-heartedly about, for a new opportunity that may be far worse than my current one, was beyond my ability. I just could not stomach the process to get it -- much less the job it might have ultimately led to in the end. In sorting through my thoughts with my husband one last time on Sunday night, I explained to him how conflicted things were in my head. I heard myself explaining that I had a great offer from a company that did not know me from any other stranger applying for a job there (though hopefully after 9 interviews with various staff, they do know me a bit) -- and they saw enough promise and value in me to offer me more, on several levels, than I currently have in my job. And yet I was considering possibly begging (it wouldn't have been begging, but I saw it in those terms) for something better than what I currently had. I would have to beg for the job, the salary, the title, and the authority that should all have come my way through years of hard work, dedication, loyalty, and commitment to a job that offered none of these things in return to me. Why could this new company see my value and yet the company I'd been working for for over 10 years not? Hearing that come out of my mouth, I knew my decision had been made.

And as I've lay in bed for the past two hours, unable to sleep and feeling somewhat deflated on what should have been a momentous day of new beginnings and possibilities for me, I had another thought. I've resigned. I'm moving on. I'm the one who comes out of this one better. And I won't let my old company, the one in which I stagnated, and felt stifled, and felt disrespected on a daily basis, have any sort of control over my emotions, my mood, or my health any more.

Just writing that sentence has made me sit taller in my chair, made my shoulders relax, and made my breathing a little more smooth. Yes, this is going to be a very good thing for me.