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Resignation
January 17, 2007 ( life )
Resignation
So, I gave notice at $dcjob[0] today, as an old Peace Corps buddy encouraged me to apply for his previous position, where I will start next month.
It was hard, as my co-workers are awesome folk, and I'm leaving them at a critical time before two big events (to be fair, I can't think of any point in the last year or so where it wouldn't have been a "critical point" -- one of the reasons I was encouraged to follow this other opportunity. In the informal exit interview, the ED even mentioned that she'd noticed my lack of engagement of recent, due in large part to the high stress levels at work.
I do think that long-term it will be bitter but good medicine for the organization. It is at a point now that a full-time IT person, or the effective equivalent, is sorely needed; I've been running at full capacity for months now just to keep things at a bare minimum of operations. I try to be rather humble, but with this style of IT work, I am highly skilled -- if I can just barely keep things going at part-time, it's a sign that it's easily a full time position.
I was reminded of my favorite positive psychologist's introduction (to me) of the concept of "flow" where you are right on the threshold between overwhelming and (too hard and not enough time) and boring (too much time and too easy). My old position moved into the overwhelming area and has been there for far too long, and I haven't enjoyed that perfect balance of challenge and personal growth to reach that challenge due to the time constraints, and it is that more than anything else that's worn on me. I hope that my next job will provide more opportunities for that. At the very least, it provides a substantially better compensation package and almost 2/3 less of a commute.
I feel bad leaving, but if it causes them to change to a full time position, then it will be for the best.
So, let's do a quick catch-up from a more positive light on life - I'm starting my last semester in grad school, taking a full load of courses, one at Georgetown which promises to be more work than I'd like, and taught from a Bank-positive techno-positivist position (I love tech, but am a pragmatist and a cynic too - I want to see it work before I suggest someone go into debt for it). I'm also taking our capstone course, which is basically a team-project course where each group runs a class and we all have a big presentation at the end. The last is another IT policy course, focused a bit more on security and privacy issues. I still need to complete my independent study from last semester, which is mostly justa case of sitting down to do it, it's pretty close.
I haven't had time (really?) to write much for OLPCNews of recent, though I did put up another post on cost estimates, this time referencing the incredibly detailed spreadsheet than an OLPC supporter in Brazil (who I got to talk to through the power of Google Spreadsheets + Chat (with some help from Google Translate too). I hope to get back to some more posts there, especially if I can tie them in to my Tech+Dev course.
Last weekend my girlfriend took me to this fantastic bed and breakfast in West Virginia for my (early) birthday present. WV is... well, let's say it reminded me of the more underdeveloped parts of East Texas, but the owners are South Africans who are huge conservationists and have been buying up as much land as they can to make a black bear reserve with conjoined to their B+B land. We saw a huge herd of deer (~20) and 2 black bears, one of which was just hanging out less than 10 feet away.
This coming weekend I hope to get away to NYC, as it's my last "open" weekend before school really gets nasty, and then the weekend after that will be my huge bday party. If you're interested in coming and for whatever reason weren't on my evite list (most likely, you're not in DC), post here and I'll add you.
Posted by griffjon at January 17, 2007 07:52 PM
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