2 ½ Months Down, 4 Months to Go

2 ½ months ago was my last day on my job of 11 years. I left for several reasons, which I will not go into here. I don’t believe it’s professional or advantageous to discuss my previous company in any way. So that means I will leave out copious amounts of praise as well as avoid any negative feedback. That’s what HR departments are for and I utilized it quite well. I must say my exit interview was one of the most enjoyable and productive conversations I had at that company. And I’ve had many!

So aside from any reasons directly related to the company (including a lot of angst about leaving it), I left for the following personal reasons:

• I had been there 11 years. 2 years in a contract/consultant role, 9 as a salaried employee. That’s a long time in any one job, particularly in the software development/IT field. I realize doctors, teachers, artists, etc. stay in the same field for their entire lives, but it’s different in my most current field. You need to move around a bit, experience other aspects of the industry (assuming I want to stay in this industry; which I’m not sure of yet), in order to move ahead and grow your skillset. So after 11 years, time to move on.
• My life became too much Expedia. My fiancé works there (we met there though we didn’t work together the whole time; ‘nother story); the majority of my day-to-day friends work(ed) there. The fiancé and I spent tons of time discussing Expedia, our careers, our strategy about our careers, our problems with Expedia and our careers, etc. We still discuss it, but with less immersion as before.
• I was just plain tired. Physically and mentally. The longest I hadn’t worked my ass off was for 4 months when I first moved to Seattle. And during that period I worked my ass off finding a job (which happened to be Microsoft which led to Expedia a year later). I worked my ass off from the time I got my first hostess job at Church St. Station, all through the bartending years, and on to Seattle. Hell, when I did get the job at Microsoft I also shortly got a second job bartending for six months. I’m tired I tell you!

So that’s why I quit my job and committed to six months off from formal “work” of any kind. So, figured it was time—now that summer is over—that I document what I intend to do so I can at least look back and figure out if I did OK, or most importantly, were there reasons I didn’t do what I said I would. That will all come in subsequent posts.

I got a phone call from a dear friend in Florida today. She asked if I was looking for a job. I was aghast, I told her of course not. She laughed (in joy). She was so afraid that I was going to be bored that I couldn’t last the full six months. I was quite honest in my response that not only could I last the six months, I don’t think 4 more months is going to be enough to get everything I want done!

Next post will be about what I want to get done. But a recap of what I’ve done so far:

• Went to my 20^th high school reunion.
• Visisted my dearest three girlfriends in Florida and most of their husbands/boyfriends (I say most because one was off doing good works for FEMA so we missed him this time around).
• Finally got our house back in shape after the extensive remodel. The remodel finished in December so I hope my work life is evidenced by the fact that it took 6 months to finish moving back in and decorating. Thankfully, my sister and BIS (that’s brother-in-sin for anyone not up on that acronym) were planning on arriving in early August which gave me a deadline to work against. How quickly artificial deadlines slip in importance when you are not working.
• Weeded the garden. You’d have to see my garden and know how much I hate yard work to understand what a phenomenal accomplishment that was. Took two weeks and my hands were crippled for an additional two as a result.
• Got to visit with my sister and BIS for almost a whole week before we took off (and huge thanks to them for using our house as their vacation home while we were gone). While we do get to visit about once a year, it’s not enough.
• Traveled throughout England with the fiancé for a lovely two weeks, with no set itinerary. Got to visit long lost and now newfound friends as well as ones we don’t want to lose touch with.

As an aside to the house redecorating, it was during that process that I discovered all the journals I had kept in the early ‘90s. Trust me that I was terrified to open those up and read them. They’d been safely forgotten in an old trunk, that trunk serving no other purpose than to allow my old cat Gypsy to get up on the bed. But I opened them, read them, and was equally pleased and embarrassed by my 20-something self. What really shook me up though, was this: I documented my life in extreme detail back then. Then I started focusing on my job. I will not be so angsty and grandiose to say I stopped focusing on my life; that’s simply not true as evidenced by my quite wonderful life. But I stopped documenting it. I don’t have pictures for significant events or handwritten notations to myself to remind me how I felt from about ’98 on. When reading the earlier journals, I realized I had documented my life so well I was able to have instant recall as to how I had felt. And that was all hand written! No excuse now with today’s technology.

So that’s 2 ½ months. Not too bad considering I essentially gave myself the summer off. This week is back to the yard to finish up some work before fall sets in and the monthly bills. Also back to Pilates which I haven’t been to for a month because of travel. Oh, and restock the fridge. Food is a big thing with me and a monthly Costco/Whole Foods restock is actually one of my favourite things to do. More on the whole “you buy your toilet paper at the grocery store?!?” issue later.