Work life.

I’m almost a month into my new job working on this national website redevelopment project and I’ve almost cleared all the stuff from the old job off my desk, hired a new person this week to take up some of the slack, and gotten through a bunch of mind-muddling bureaucracy of the type I have an inborn resistance to. Although I have been working at my project since the beginning of the month, I finally feel like I can put my full attention to it now – and that is exciting. And a bit scary. It’s one of those big jobs that requires me to put my creative intelligence to work in a way I haven’t been asked to in awhile. Information mapping, architectures, potential application development…. these things I need to be clear on before I go to do the big battle of changing the way we do web (which by any estimation is poorly, which one would think people want to change).

I am surprised at how much of a shift this is, even though I am in the same cube (or working from home), with the same people around me. The change is in no longer reporting through the same structure and a new outlay of expectations and responsibilities in front of me – which gives me that little bit of necessary distance from the regional office politics and disappointments of the last year. It also gives me a whole new set of problems to solve, and although daunting, I am always happier in the state of charting a new course than being forced to follow someone else.

So, apparently I am plotting things correctly, and at least my boss back east seems quite pleased with all my ideas so far. They seem a bit crazy, some of them, but as long as I can back them up with the why and how then they will at least merit some discussion at the top. We’ll see. We could come out of this with some pretty significant new tools for those involved in our field of research and decision-making. But not if we don’t get people onside – which is the larger part of the game than just thinking up a bunch of cool ideas.

It’s strange really, I’ve been working for the same outfit for over eight years now, and every time I have come close to leaving out of boredom or frustration, a new internal opportunity comes along at just the right time and saves me. The only thing keeping me going in the past year was my union involvement, my job life had become so unsatisfying and I was starting to apply out for other work again, when along comes an offer that makes me recommit to my work and my workplace. And it’s not the first time. I’ve been lucky that way I guess – and with the job market the way it is (professional admin/communications are hard to hire these days) I expect I should be able to continue to reshape roles over the next several years of work. Failing the apocalypse that is.

And you know, I am grateful for this privilege of work in a world of so much marginal labour – grateful that during times of emotional turmoil I have this work-thing to focus on; a stability in an otherwise shaky life which gives my days a shape and my life a security. Strange to me that I have hung in here this long, but not at all a regret – though I also suspect this is my last big project before I go elsewhere – a couple more years to savour this easiness of place and path.