Work is Winning

I logged in to EVE last night for the first time in awhile and got asked, "where ya' been?"

Fair question.

Snarky Answer:  Not in EVE.

Better Answer: Work is winning. I've not been burning extra hours, but have been arriving home exhausted each night.  I've been struggling to make a coherent dinner, and after that I'm without sufficient energy to boot the EVE client.  So I squander the evening on something else, mindless, and then generally fall asleep on the couch before retiring early.  Weekends have been recovery and some quality time on the bicycle when I can sneak in the miles.

The interesting part is that work has been good.  Excellent, even.  Longtime readers will maybe recall that I switched offices in October.  The first few weeks were tough. My coworkers viewed me skeptically and I was drastically undertasked.  The holiday season was interesting as things began to click, and by late January I was firing on all cylinders and picking up task after task after task.

I find it stressful, but stressful in that hectic way.  Every day is like trying to wrestle 27 squirrels into a minivan with all the windows open.  There's a hundred things to do and I need to be in many places at once.

The old job was stressful in a highly negative way.  The relationship with our east coast teammates had eroded to the point of being openly hostile.  I came to work every day and argued against the idiotic (and in my business, downright dangerous/hazardous) decisions that were being made.  And my counterparts were making them intentionally just to go against the advice my team provided.  Every phone call was a fight; every email an argument.  I came home mad every single night.

The old job was list trying to wrestle a grizzly bear into a minivan with someone holding a trash bag over your head tightly, suffocating you while you're trying not to get bit.

I heard from some of my old coworkers today. Their situation is miserable.  Most are biding their time until options are presented and the office is closed down mid-next year.  With pensions, buyouts, accrued vacation, and so on, they're in a position where it's better for them and their families that they "shut up and color" than resign outright like I did (although I got a pretty sweet deal and lost nothing in my transaction).

Contact from the old team made me pause and take stock of where I was.  I'm busy. I'm tired. But I'm happy, and I haven't been able to say that in a few years.

Anyway, I'm still here. Work is winning.  It's winning because I'm letting it.  My change has been a net positive and the opportunities in the new organization are almost endless.  I'm learning a ton. I'm making a difference.

But I'm also very, very tired.