Today was the worst day that I’ve had at my new job.  It’s been about six weeks since I started and it’s been a blast!  I’ve thrown myself into learning the technical, interpersonal, and political components of my new role and it’s been wonderful.  In retrospect, the nearly two months off that I took over the summer were incredibly therapeutic and really helped me store up some creative energy to bring to the new job.

Today was the worst day because something went wrong late last week, I didn’t know to check it, and I had to write an email to the user community and tell them we wouldn’t have an update today.  That’s it!  The problem should correct itself tonight and we’ll be back on track.  Yes, I was being sarcastic–it was a comparatively tough day, but that’s because the rest have been pretty darned good.

The way I think of “slowing down” does not, in any way, preclude hard work.  But work, to paraphrase Shakespeare, “makes a good servant and a poor master.”  Working at HP had become physically painful.  It seemed that I was expected to work more or less any time of the day or night, and–to have any hope of keeping up–all the in-between time, as well.  We joked that “work/life balance” had gotten much simpler: 100% versus 0%.  The work, for the most part, wasn’t even something I enjoyed or even felt qualified to do.

This was hard work to a destructive degree (see my earlier post, “Hopes and Fears” for more info on the destruction).  I submit that hard work can also be healthy work, if we acknowledge certain truths.  Chief among these truths is this:

“Work has a point of diminishing returns, where an hour’s investment returns only a few minutes of productivity.”

My curve of productivity, relative to time invested, falls off sharply after 8 hours.  What would be a low-productivity time outlay at work can turn into a great, and restorative, experience by going home, working in the yard, authoring a blog, or exercising.  Work can be as psychologically addictive as food, or booze, or CSI:Miami.  It’s often tempting to just stay another hour or two and “wrap things up.”  In my experience, this is a seductive mirage.  Too often I’ve found myself doggedly staying on some task, feeling my mental acuity and physical stamina ebbing, and knowing that I’d accomplished very little in the past hour.  Staying until 7 turned into staying until 9:30 and, worse yet, all too often the clear light of morning revealed that last night’s work was unnecessary or fatally flawed.

Instead, I am trying to learn to do a productive wind-down at a specific time.  This involves bringing the work to a logical stopping place, leaving myself “flow notes” to help ramp up into a productive pace quickly the next day, saying goodnight to my co-workers, and then still making the bus without running.  I’m only a C student where this practice is concerned, but I’m staying at it.  And that “staying at it” is how I hope to slow down in what seems to be an ever-accelerating world.

“Hope is a good thing–maybe the best of things–and no good thing ever dies.”

So goes my favorite quote fromThe Shawshank Redemption. As much as anything, my recent departure from HP was due to my fear greatly outweighing my hope–as it had for several months. But in my case, Red was right, thank the Great Spirit!

What was I afraid of?  A number of things, I think, but the biggest was that I did not believe that I could do the job assigned me and, despite all indications to the contrary, I feared that I would be found incompetent.

I fear being thought incompetent more than I fear death.  Really.

QBQ*: Why did I feel so incompetent?  Because even though I had been in my support lead role for over a year, I did not feel as though I had made any progress in gaining deep understanding of the applications that I supported.  Considering the hundreds of emails, instant messages, and todo list items on my plate, there wasn’t time–and I felt that there never would be. This situation provided perfect growing conditions for what became a truly noxious weed.  The seed was my particular set of insecurities, the light was provided by the innumerable transformational changes going on at all levels of HP, and the nourishment was the certain knowledge that my job would relocate to Texas next year–with or without me.

(Insecurity+workload) * transformational change * impending job loss = FEAR

Fear begets stress.  Not the healthy stress of being challenged or stretched, but the unhealthy stress of feeling vulnerable before the world and unable to make progress or even defend oneself.  It’s a credit to my boss that she kept me propped up for months, believing that I’d turn a corner to find I could afford the time to learn, to grow, to gain the expertise whose absence was the root of my problem.  When the anxiety attacks, headaches, and nausea (my trifecta of stress symptoms) made work inherently unhealthy, I knew I had to do something drastic.  So after 23 mostly good years with HP, I quit.

I wondered, as my end date approached, if I was just fooling myself.  Perhaps I had just become so stodgy and irrelevant that I couldn’t cope with work and life at the same time, no matter where I went or what I did.  In fact, could I even cope with being “between assignments” (a.k.a., unemployed)?  For better or for worse, I packed a few boxes, handed in my ID, and drove home.  It was a sunny midafternoon.

Enter hope.  It’s been two weeks now, and I feel great!  Lately I’ve been focused on doing well in an upcoming job interview with the local university–a job that I want very much.  More on that later.  But even in the first couple of days, the fear drained away and hope rushed in.  Hope…and something else.  Call it ‘resolve’, or even ‘confidence’.  I began to believe that I could find a new job and that I still have a lot to contribute.

Within the first 24 hours after I pulled out of the employee parking lot for the last time, the color returned to my sight.  I could hear the birds singing.  I could feel the sunshine of my family’s love.  And it all felt very, very good.  This good feeling served as a stark contrast to where I must have been, if these sensations felt new to me.

Now, I not only have that good feeling, but I’m challenged and stretched to do everything I can to earn this job at OSU.  They want someone that knows their way around data warehouses, someone that can do analysis, design, coding, and support.  Someone to provide training.  Someone to listen to the end users and show them how they might do things better–and take back their good suggestions to the technical team for future development.  Now, this is the kind of work that I love!

Wanting something that is out of one’s control is risky business.  It’s all too easy to convince yourself that it’s yours for the taking–and then, too often, comes the bitter reality that it was never really yours.  Then again, if we do not want, if we do not work toward fulfilling that want, what is life?  The drive to reach for the next great thing is, I believe, the major reason we are human.

I want the life that will be made possible through this new job.  I want it for myself, for my family, and for all of my friends at HP that are in pain similar to mine.  Life is good, and can be even better.  I will try for this job with everything I have and if I succeed, it will be great.  If I fail, I will do something else.

My hope towers immeasurably over my fear–and hope, which may be the best of things, lives.

* "QBQ" = "Question Behind the Question"

Leaving HP has been a whirlwind, from several perspectives. First, there’s the wonderful feeling of freedom!! Second, the feeling of floating along without anyone to help and support you. Third, there’s work on the nuts-and-bolts stuff like COBRA that needs doing. I’ve gotten caught up in all of it, so learning Wordpress has had to take a back seat. I’ll try to blog more as I get the chance and work through some of this stuff. Overall, though, I’m enjoying this summer tremendously–even when it feels like I’ve jumped off a bridge into freezing water.

Today is July 4, Independence Day in the United States.  Yesterday was my last at Hewlett-Packard (HP) after 23 years of service, mostly in the Information Technology (IT) arena.  There’s been a lot of ups and downs, as you might expect in that timespan, and I’ll probably write about both.  For now, though, my main focus is on finding a new job–not a simple feat in a small (~50,000 population), northwest US college town.

Considering the conditions of the job I’m leaving (a big part of which is how I feel about the company and my role in it), this is a move I need to make right now.  My goal is to find success at a slower pace than I’ve been expected to keep up at HP.  Something will turn up, I’m sure of it.  I don’t know why I’m so confident about this, but I truly am.  And, while I am sure that there will come a time when any job looks pretty good, I’ve got to admit that taking a few days or weeks to mostly unwind is looking pretty darn smart right at the moment.

Ah, summer!