Good Problems

A friend of mine called me on Tuesday to recruit me for a soon-to-be-open position at his company. He's one of the few people that I respected during my tenure as a middle manager for a shoddily-run college marketing company that, in my opinion, was headed up by a dude with a severe Napoleon complex. I mean, this is the gig that made me think Dilbert is funny. That's something that I don't think I can forgive easily. But I don't want to add to the billion or so hours that I've spent kvetching about that five-year span in my professional life, so I'll move on to the topic at hand.

I like my current job; I don't love it. I'm not one of those people whose eyes fly open in the morning, eagerly anticipating the rigors of their day at the office. I've never actually met one of those folks, so I'm beginning to think they are urban legends. So, I wasn't really looking for anything new, though I've pretty much decided that I couldn't make a long-term career out of my current stint. This lightening bolt of a call, though has forced me to take stock of my situation and sift out the stuff that I'm wanting to change in my professional life.

I drew up a Pro & Con list, but the thing ended up looking like a diseased Venn diagram. Everything that would be good about leaving would also be bad about leaving -- I'm a little bored with my position, but that also means that I can check in and check out predictably. I get frustrated with the lack of accountability when somebody screws something up, but I like the atmosphere of education, which translates to a "learning from your mistakes" philosophy. The new job would offer me the opportunity to travel, but it might be more travel than I want. And so on, and so on, and so on.

Do you want to know what silly, logistical thing it boils down to? The job I'm being offered is about twenty minutes away from my home, so I'd get to see the boy and my husband for about twice as much time a day as I normally do. And it would be better time, because I wouldn't be freakin' exhausted from my hour-and-fifteen-minute one-way commute. So, despite the fact that there'd be a bit of a pay cut, and that it's not really on any particular career trajectory, I'm really, really thinking about taking him up on it.

I'll let you know what happens.