Reflection on Transitions

My awesome, supportive mom called my attention to a blog post from 09.29.11, which I titled "Transitions" (yeah I'm cliche). I was right on the verge of beginning the job that I'm now right on the verge of ending, and so it seems like an appropriate time to reflect on what I've learned in the last nine months, and try to parse through some of the same-but-opposite feelings that I have now.

You know what jumps out to me first? This line right here: "[Sean is] such a generous man, and the thought of leaving a boss who already loves me and respects me is terrifying." I think there was some amount of prescience on my part there, and as my mom mentioned, a certain amount of doubt that I felt acutely right from the get-go. If I knew that two particular qualities were so important to me - the love and respect of my boss, and a sense that I am accomplished in my field - then why did I leave? Maybe it's as simple as having been caught up in the career-path delusion, which turned out not to be applicable to me anyway when I found out that this job was nothing like a career, and more like a time-filler.

I've really tried to consider what I've learned from this experience. I've weighed my different reasons for being unhappy in this job, trying to figure out which ones were about people and which ones were about the work itself. If I'm perfectly honest, part of it probably had to do with the hours. Oddly, I really enjoy having afternoons to myself, and those three hours I'd get off earlier at Drip left me room to at least consider being more creative. More on that in a minute. But the scale goes like this: on the one hand, I believe in the Nickelodeon. When I told Andy I was leaving, he asked me some question that prompted me to tell him, entirely honestly, that I've never stopped believing in the Nick. It's not like that at all. But on the other side of that spectrum, I can't believe in terrifically boring clerical work for a boss that I can hardly stand making eye contact with. If there were even one small part of my job that required creativity, I think I'd be much more willing to stick it out. But all I do is pull reports from broken databases, then cobble together multiple busted reports in order to make one half-assed list that's probably only half correct. I ask for newer, better systems only to be denied, and then am blamed for the nature of those lists.

It doesn't help that I'm not active, I have little interaction with anyone outside of the office, and am never thanked for the work I put in. Maybe this is office lifestyle - maybe the kind of passive-aggressive cruelty we endure is actually totally normal - but either way, I'm not into it. Considering all the stereotypes about the restaurant/food service industry, I've got to say I've been treated much better by customers and employers in food service than by customers and employers in the "real world."

Do I regret giving it a shot? No. I learned so much. Do I regret the way I've handled some of the situations during this period? Absolutely. I covered a lot of that in the last post. Am I afraid that it's going to be difficult moving forward after this job? Yes. I definitely do. All that crap about "a black mark by my name" could still be true, even if I have tried to exit as gracefully as possible. But is there a big weight off, knowing that I'm going somewhere that I'm loved and respected and valued? Yes. More than anything.