One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

I feel I've gone quite a bit bonkers recently.

I suppose it boils down to a fundamental dislike of making Big Life Decisions and that, within the last six months or so, it's become clear we'll need to be making some of those BLDs. Let's rehash some key points, shall we?

I received a double promotion and started a new job in April. This was awesome because I hated the role I had been forced into and I was still making the same salary that I had been hired in at.

While the subject matter of my current role is more interesting, the primary fun factor of working in this department, and in this company, is the people I work with.

That becomes problematic when those people start leaving.

I'm tired of renting. We pay a lot of money per month to avoid the responsibility of home ownership. I'm starting to question whether that trade off is worth it.

The housing prices around here are nothing short of ridiculous.

The salary vs. housing costs vs. job happiness issues become more aggravating when I learned that some of my peers, with similar enough backgrounds, job titles, and current responsibilities as I, are making quite a bit more than me. I am not a greedy individual but I do not like feeling being taken advantage of.

I was informed that there really is no hope of me "exceeding expectations" this year given my new role is primarily research-based. I disagree with this. It also peeves me off because I've exceeded expectations for the last two years when, of course, there were wage freezes.

My friends are one of the most important components of my life and I love being around them. Unfortunately, most of them reside in Waukesha/Milwaukee, with a good number of others located around Columbus and Chicago. (I'm not forgetting about those of you peppered around Green Bay, Minneapolis, etc!).

I absolutely, unequivocally, passionately hate change. Also not a fan of large scale decision making.

So this rapidly becomes a series of fundamental questions: Should I stay? Should I go? If I go, where should I go? Unfortunately, the side effect of all of this is that if my future comes up in casual conversation, I start to become irrational and, well, stupid. I start reading too much into things, as if I can discern some hint of the decision I'm supposed to make through the current conversation. Quite frankly, I've forgotten how to be awesome and how to make awesome decisions and that drives me absolutely crazy. I think it drives those around me crazy, too.

I'd much rather feel awesome than feel crazy. Unfortunately, I think that might mean I have to seriously contemplate what the hell I want to do with my life.

Or I could just have a drink and procrastinate on thinking about BLDs some more.

It's not a raise, but it's something.

There was a bit of a fire drill at work the other day with my one and only favorite client (I have plenty of descriptive words I could use but, again, I'll keep things G-rated). I'll spare you the boring details, but the end result was that I got this!

Of course, getting a free camera (free!) isn't enough to keep me from being critical of the darn thing. The camera is pretty much all style and mediocre substance (I think image quality is a little worse than my old camera, for instance). However, I barely know how to work all the settings so some of this still may be user error.

But, still--FREE. And it's tiny. (And I'm not a photographer). So I think, overall, this works out pretty well for me.

-KP

I suppose it could be worse.

The melodramatic part of me would start this blog entry by saying, "I lost my job today." But that's not fact. It's kind of how I feel, but it's not what actually happened since I'm still thankfully employed.

Instead, I'm the lucky one who is getting forcibly relocated to a different group in my department, complete with an entirely different set of responsibilities. I haven't hidden the fact that I've really enjoyed the position I've worked in since being hired--I owned a product that appealed to my sociological background and was exposed to a revolving wheel of new and different(!) research projects. Exposure to these new and different(!) things kept things interesting. Perhaps more importantly, however, was that I was good at what I did... good to the point where my (now former) manager told me today that I'm getting an 'exceeds expectations' on my yearly review. (I guess that deserves a "Yay!").

Rationally, it's most likely that my relocation isn't because of a lack of performance but because I have performed. It's also because I'm one of the very few in our department that has any amount of personal skills--not just the analytic mindset (basically I was compared against the stereotypical idea of a statistician, which is thought to be prominent in our department). However, the irrational side of me sees this as a demotion to more of a glorified babysitter role.

Time will tell if this move is as good to my career development as it's being spun by management. But today's a day I'm just overly frustrated and grumpy with the situation.

I still have a job, however. If anything, this move makes me feel like I have more job security than I did previously... they're not going to move a guy to this role (which is considered pretty damned important by the company), spend the time getting him up to speed to satisfy the client and keep them satisfied, only to let him go.

One would hope.

-KP

Corporate Crap

Well, I survived my first experience with corporate layoffs. Unfortunately, a good friend of mine did not. What a freaking joke.

Here we all were feeling pretty good about our job security because of a recent big contract win and the fact that our business seems relatively recession proof. But, our jobs were not safe from that classic corporate pasttime: restructuring. Almost 300 people were laid off yesterday (out of approximately 3,000). Of the 30 or so in my department, four got the boot and all of them were skilled, talented, and productive. Not all were relative newbies, either... at least one of the guys had worked here for around 40 years. Unbelievable.

There are still more layoffs to be made by the end of the year, but the general feel my boss has is that these eliminations will be focused more on managerial positions. Still, nothing like layoffs to make you realize that everyone is expendable and, at any moment, you could be unemployed.

-KP

Is it Friday yet?

Today was been chock full of weird. It started off well, if not early. I have SAS training downtown for two days so I took the Metra down early. This is the third training course I've taken and I've made a bit of a routine for the mornings. Class doesn't start until 9am but I still take the 6:30am train so I can grab some coffee and go wandering around. Looking at all the architecture, plus all the people watching, make these some pretty fun mornings. The last time I was downtown, however, I ran into the cast of Reno 911! (in character!) promoting their movie and didn't have my camera on me. No celebrities this time, but I did take a few snapshots while wandering around Millenium Park.







Ok, not so weird just yet, right?

Let's backtrack a bit, then. On the way downtown, the person sitting behind me was absolutely blaring Phil Collins on her iPod while snoring up something fierce! I felt like I was going to go into auditory overload. Ok, maybe that's more annoying than weird.

How about this? Shortly after class began, I find out that my boss at work is accepting another position with the company. Now we are down one employee and our boss. As the Mutant Enemy monster would say, "Grr! Argg!"

Remember that trip to Maui Molly and I took because Mike had the hookup? It turns out that someone I was an RA with in the dorms stayed in the exact same house a month or so prior because she also has a brother-in-law that works for The Alexander Company. Talk about a small world.

Onto a little less weird and a little more good--the paper is as proofread as its going to get. I'm printing it out Wednesday and stopping at the post office after work. Peer review, here we come! Can I get some fingers crossed, please? I know I've redefined procrastination, but it'd be nice if this wasn't rejected outright.

Or how about a little less good news and a little more bad? It's 9:45pm and Molly is still at work.

-KP

"The land down under. We're gonna get drunk with Russell Crowe and head-butt some goddamn kangaroos."
-Ari Gold, Entourage