a life lived between two points

It's funny how, now that I'm older, I reflect upon the 'words of wisdom' shared with me by people who were my current age or greater when I was in my early 20's.  I can very clearly remember the circumstances of their advice and how I reacted to it (internally) at the time.  Most of these people were not my parents, rather random people I encountered or instructors during my first stint in college.

I had a psychology instructor once tell me: "People easily forget that 90% of their lives are lived between two points:  "Life is too short..." and "Everything is temporary".  I didn't really get it at the time-probably because I was young, full of 'life' and thought I knew all I needed to know about 'life'.  The stuff I didn't know, I'd figure out as I needed to along the way.  For the most part, that worked out for me...I managed to avoid the addictive behavior I was raised with by both parents-although I did have a brief collision with co-dependency that altered the course of my future to the person I am now.  It's not a 'good' or 'bad' thing-it just is.  I don't know how I would have been otherwise but I'm sure it wouldn't have been 'good'.

In any event, my old Psychology instructor's words came back to me in what I'll refer to as an epiphany last week.  I was interviewing for a new job at a large company and I walked out of the interview rather confident that things had gone well.  I talked a little too much but realized that 'too much' is relative.  I didn't have anything to worry about.  Three days later, I was offered the position.  I contemplated leaving my current job-asked a co-worker/friend for his advice-pretending he were in the same position, what would he do?  It was a tough choice.  My current company isn't progressive at all-although it has some of the greatest potential I've experienced from an organization.  There's a project that will forever change the landscape of the future of the company and I was in line to manage it...but the current situation is static and complacent.  I'm bored out of my skull.

I positioned the new opportunity to launch my bid to run the proposed project to see if my current employer would counter-offer.  I'm in a weird position where the company doesn't have anything for me to do because I've automated 90% of my job but they can't afford to lose me because I'm one of the only people who knows how things work in the rest of the business world-because I've worked many other places, while most of the people started working at this place and have never sought new horizons.

I was borderline stressed out for half the day...wondering what I should do.

And then, it hit me.

"Everything is temporary...."

"Life is too short..."

And I smiled, realizing that I was in the driver's seat of the future of my career...and I always had been.

I wound up staying with my current employer because I didn't want to start over at a new place with a longer commute and have to build everything up from scratch.

I feel like I've made the smart decision but, as they say, 'time will tell'.

And if it doesn't work out, well...'everything is temporary'-including jobs that don't help me grow as a person and 'life is too short' to work at a job that is just that.

Background Tune: "Bangarang" by Skrillex