Nervous Excitement

I slept terribly last night, waking up ever hour or so and having a hard time going back to sleep. I woke up at 6:30 and laid in bed wide awake--my mind was racing in so many directions I finally just got up. I guess it's not that strange under the circumstances, because a lot has happened in the last 48 hours and I'm getting ready to experience some major life changes. For the few people out there who don't know yet, I officially quit my job yesterday and I'm so very excited about it!

While a few of my friends were a little surprised, most people close to me knew I had been contemplating this change for a really long time. Honestly, the decision has been years in the making. I first started thinking about quitting or going part time several years ago when my back problems started. Sitting is just so painful for me, and since I sit at a computer programming reports all day long, that means I'm in pain every single day at work. This pain has controlled my life for so long, and I am so thankful that I won't have to sit all day long every day anymore.

Really though, the back pain was just the tip of the iceberg. For months we'd been praying that God would give us guidance and wisdom in relation to my job, because there were just so many issues making me want to quit--issues at work and in our personal lives. I'd been fighting my desire to leave mostly because of financial worries, since without two incomes we certainly won't be able to support as many ministries and causes that are important to us. It felt selfish to stay home when I'm capable of working since there are missionaries relying on our support to feed their families. It felt selfish to leave a good job when so many people were completely out of work. Finally though, so many things had piled up on the list of things making me want to quit, I felt like this must be God's direction--I was so burdened it felt nearly impossible to stay!

Although I don't necessarily want to go into huge amounts of detail about all the reasons I'm leaving, I do want to make a brief list, mostly so that 10 years from now I'll remember why I made this decision!

Work Related

1. I just had my 12th anniversary at work, and have been in my current position for 9 years. For about the last 2 years, I feel like I haven't learned anything new, so the work I'm doing is generally not that challenging, which means I'm not enjoying it nearly as much as I used to.

2. While the work I'm doing (creating database reports using SQL and PL/SQL, in case you're curious) isn't necessarily challenging, my workload certainly is. On average, I get 20-30 requests for reports or data each week, and it can be pretty stressful, especially because many people don't plan ahead and think their request is an emergency.

3. One of my responsibilities was training new employees on how to run reports, and only about 10% of the people I've trained over the years actually a) understand how the database works and b) remember the reports they were trained on and c) still actually work at the EA and d) actually care. It was such an exercise in futility and I was really tired of it.

4. As my organization geared up for another campaign, there was some reorganization taking place elsewhere in the building that affected my job and made the reporting process less efficient. Inefficiency is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me--I just can't take it.

5. There's another department in the building that has an incredible amount of turnover--there have been 16 people in 2 positions in 12 years. Since I happen to have worked in that department previously and also happen to have helped create their reporting application, the training of those new people and the cleaning up of their data-related messes always falls on my shoulders. They just had another person leave, and I just don't want to deal with them anymore. I find it super frustrating that the administration doesn't just fix the problem in the department that's causing all the turnover!

6. While my responsibilities at work seemed to increase each year, my position/title did not, so I felt as though my career wasn't advancing at all and there was no potential that it ever would.

I could probably think of lots of other things if I tried, but these were definitely the most significant work issues. The issues in my personal life are so numerous that I'll just have to put them into their own post tomorrow!