How I Got Here

I’ve been asked why I am leaving my job and going overseas for 3-1/2 months with no promise of employment when I get back. The short answer is I want some time off to take a look at what I am doing and decide if I want to do this for another 25+ years or if I should try something else.

I’ve had some good times at my current job but for many years I have also had a sense of dissatisfaction. But I was on cruise control and settled in to earning enough to make me comfortable when in 2012 I started working for a new manager whom I was not really comfortable with. Looking back he was OK but I did not like the change and then a year later and I found myself working for another new manager, this time with an extremely toxic personality and by the time the summer of 2014 came along I was burnt out. I’ll spare the details other than I don’t think he wanted me in his department and life got to the point at work where I did not care if he let me go.

In the fall of 2011 I had started coaching college novice rowing and I think it was that which gave me strength to get through what was a dark time at work. It was a totally different world and I don’t know that I made a difference there but it felt like it at times. Despite the fact that they paid barely enough to cover my expenses and I had to work even harder at my other job to keep it up, I did this 6 days a week for three seasons. Until the spring of ’14 when my toxic boss made me quit.

Being a coach at times seemed as much a psychological wellness position as a coaching position, and I started to think about what I would have told members of my team if they were going through the same thing. So I decided a change of momentum was needed and began to make plans to take time off. Everything was in motion, I committed to Projects Abroad and made a down payment, refinanced my condo, and had started putting everything in motion when suddenly in January I have a new boss, one that happen to respect and like working for.

It took about two weeks but with my old boss gone I started to realize how bad things had gotten for me and now they were getting better. In turn, this was probably the first crisis for me on leaving as now I was faced with a very different environment at work. It was not too late to call the whole thing off and would have been easy, nobody really knew about my plans at that point. But the more I thought about it the more I began to realize my old boss probably did me a favor. I had been dissatisfied with work for a while and by pushing me right up to the edge I finally took it into my hands to do something about it. I won’t miss you but thank you.

To those of you whom I coached, you don't know it but you too had a hand in my making this decision so a heart felt thank you to you as well.

But there is more to my decision than working for a boss I did not like and some of my original dissatisfaction I believe stems back to 9/11, which probably sounds dumb, but that day most certainly changed my perception of things. For one I became proud of what this country can stand for. I also disliked some of the things it has come to be associated with and as such I wanted to do something that made the world a better place. Cue sappy music.

Most people don’t know this about me but one year after 9/11 I started working at becoming a cop because I saw that as something I could do that would make a difference in peoples lives. During the course of over two years I took the police exams in Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, and a half dozen suburbs. I've actually been hooked up to a lie detector twice. Between that and the competitive rowing team I was a part of organizing, I felt as if I was working towards something. In 2005 all the stars were aligning, my team was very competitive going into the biggest race of the year and I had been given an intent to hire by a local department with a date to report to the police academy.

That date conflicted with the Head of the Charles and after working so hard that season I did not want to miss the race nor did I want to force my boat to replace me with only a few weeks to go. So I deferred my date to report to the academy. We did not win a medal, 0.0168 seconds too slow for that, but that year is still the high point of my rowing career, however it may have been my undoing in being a cop. An injury that I am pretty sure was aggravated by training with the team got worse after the season and when the time came to report to the academy I was not able to do the run. Unable to defer the date again I had to decline the position and that put an end to it all. At 35 I was too old to apply elsewhere and walking away was very hard for me to deal with but looking back I don’t think I would have changed anything. Despite how things turned out in January of '06, 2005 with its potentials for the future was perhaps the happiest time I have had. Ever since I suppose I have been trying to figure out how to get back to that. Until now.

This decision to take time off has me excited about the potential of the future again and in many ways I feel stronger now than I have at any time in the last 10 years. I suppose it could totally blow up in my face but for the first time in a long time it feels like the possibilities are wide open. I have no idea what will happen but if feels like good things are on the horizon.