June 08, 2001
Opportunities
Ever have an opportunity so good you weren't sure if you could pass it up, even though taking it means rearranging a lot of priorities?
I should start from the beginning, I suppose. Things have been, well... tense, for lack of a better word, at work lately. More than just lately. It's been building for a while. There are personality conflicts and lots of immaturity and just some very very nasty attitudes going on. Before I was a "senior rep", I could bury my head in the sand and ignore it. Now that I actually have a strong responsibility for what goes on around here, I can't ignore it anymore. And I'm tired of dealing with it. My rallying cry this week has been, "I want to work with the grownups for a change!"
So yesterday I broke down and let my supervisor know that I might want to try and transfer out of the department. I gave him a list of available positions I thought I'd be qualified for and why, along with the cons of each as well. We talked about it today. There is a chance I am a good candidate to work in product support. The timing is such that if I were hired into support, I could make the change and start training there within a month. I would enjoy the job, I'm fairly certain. It definitely pays better. The stress level is probably about the same, but I would have more autonomy and it would be mentally challenging. Grownups work in that department.
But...
Support reps aren't hired in part time. And they work a lot of overtime. I probably wouldn't, at least to start, have the same flexibility with my schedule, which means I would be really limited, both in how many classes I could take each semester, and when I could take them. As it is, I've been looking at finishing school in two years. This could push it back considerably. I'm acutely conscious of not getting any younger, despite myself. I'm bothered -- even though I know I shouldn't be -- by the idea of finishing grad school at forty. I'm also worried that I'll never finish school, or that I'll get so "comfortable" with a good job and a good salary that I'll never go to grad school at all, not wanting to take that step backwards financially to do so.
I want to have it all. I want to finish school, but I want to have a respectable job in the meantime. I'm also acutely conscious of being nearly 29 years old, living with my parents, and having a crappy job. At least, that's one side of the coin. The other side is that I'm 29 years old, working full-time and going to college and working as a freelance writer. I want to be more than I am, and I can't decide how to reconcile everything that I am and everything I want to be and make it all work together.
Am I running away from the responsibilities I have with my current job? Am I sabotaging my school efforts? Am I running away from all the personal issues I was dealing with last week and the week before? That, unfortunately, is the downside of years of therapy -- you start hyperanalyzing everything you do for hidden reasons and motivations.
I'm going to think a lot about it this weekend. I have no idea yet what I want to do, but I know I can't keep going as I have been.
Posted by Lisa at June 8, 2001 02:21 PM
