Surviving the Next Five Years
Sunlight between Abandoned Grain Elevators, Gainesville TX.
It appears I am not being let go. I am meeting with the new exec over our group on Monday. I have been assured it will be a get-to-know-you meeting, not a you're-fired meeting.
Okay.
Now what?
Now I have a more subtle conundrum: How to avoid reporting to an annoying team member. In the short term, I have no choice. We need someone to take on the role, and I have positioned myself as a solo expert, not a manager, so she's the logical choice.
I think she's a good organizer... and that's about it. She's the kind of person who puts everything into spreadsheets and sends half a dozen follow-up emails for every meeting. The world needs people like that, but I do not. And I'm quite certain that, under the stress of a new role, she will become even more pedantic.
This is why it helps me to have a big-picture goal: Survive the next 5 years. I can do that.
I remember clearly the first time I made such a big-picture goal. I was walking to my freshman dorm room, carrying a box. I was wearing a red shirt, and I saw myself in the reflection of the glass double doors as I approached. I paused, considered myself, and heard a voice in my head: "Your goal is to graduate in four years." I nodded to myself, and made it so. That was September 1984. I graduated in May 1988.
Hell, the next one may have been "stay at this job for five years," back in 2010. In between, my goals were too short-term, too erratic, with the possible exceptions of "get a black belt by 30" (did it) and "meet the woman you're going to marry by 30" (did that, too). The one thing I didn't do was "travel to Japan by 30." (I'm going this winter, at 60.)
I'm a big picture guy. I don't do spreadsheets; I show up and improvise. I make the elearning course and revise it till I like it; I don't storyboard it first. When leading a webinar, I don't follow a timetable; I shoot for a certain spot at the halfway point, and if I'm running long at the end, I wrap up on time and send a follow up email with anything important. It's not a better way to work. It's just a better way for me. I can follow a list, if I have to. I just don't want to. It's less fun. In fact... I kind of love it when things go wrong, because I'm so good at improvisation. My core problem isn't ability. It's boredom.
I still have my work badge from my first real job, the job I wish I'd kept, the job that quitting ultimately led to the end of my marriage. I was so proud when I got that job, and three years later, I was so fucking bored. We got new badges every year, and that last badge... man, I have no poker face. I look miserable.
Why was quitting that job so catastrophic? Because the job I left it for sucked, and so did the one after that. I didn't have enough experience to realize that I already had a job that was as good as jobs get. It was close to our new place, with mostly nice people, in a good part of town. Taking a job with a 20% pay raise that included a one hour commute was dumb. I came home angry, every day. The new people I worked with were some of the most boring people on earth. I panicked, and switched jobs again, and again. Surely, it'll be better this time. Only, it never was.
At least not until 2015, when I realized what that five-year commitment I'd made had done for me and my family: A better standard of living. The ability to handle emergencies, easily. A happier father, and a mostly content husband.