It just so happens that my last few weeks of indenture are coinciding with a fairly massive influx of new people into the IT department of the bank where I work. This is coming, conveniently enough for those left behind right around the same time as a similarly massive outflow of other, mostly exhausted people, so I guess it's not a big surprise. Part of the universe expands, another part contracts.

In any case, I was stopping off to dump some plastic in the kitchen recycling this afternoon, and one of my new co-workers who happened to be there making coffee thought it might be a good opportunity to probe a bit in order to see just what the hell is wrong with me. After all, I've got what a lot of people would call a good job. I'm an Enterprise Architect in a well-respected company, I earn a good salary by local standards, and I've earned a fair amount of responsibility and, if it's not too bold to say so, some respect in my time there. I can be pretty free with the time I spend on the job. If I come in at 10:00, no one will generally complain, and if I leave at 4:00, no one gives me dirty looks. What, pray tell, would possess someone in this position to chuck it all with nothing concrete waiting in the wings? It's not the first time I've gotten this since I resigned. The more direct ones come right out and ask if you're nuts; most people just whisper and wonder. Ultimately everyone only seems to want you to respond in a way that reinforces the opinion they've already formed about you.

If you think about something long enough (in my case, over a year) you eventually come up with so many reasons that it can be hard to sort out what you really feel. And who knows? Maybe that's just the thing you need to get off your ass and DO SOMETHING. In any case, I figured out that there's not a good reason I can give to people who aren't already inclined toward a similar point of view. Mostly, I think I've tired of the baggage that working in a corporate environment requires you to carry: the glacial pace of progress, endless meetings, office politics, org charts, process definitions, theory completely divorced from reality, busy work, etcetera, etcetera, ad infinitum. Out of all of it, I'd have to say it was the pace of activity and the long lag time between completing a task and seeing the result of it that did me in. Much like my dog, I find that I learn more when praised immediately after good work and scolded immediately after bad work, and I wasn't getting that in a deep hierarchy with eternal approval processes and bitter back-and-forths dramatics.

At the end of the day, I came to the conclusion that I could do better for myself and that I had no one else to blame if I outsourced satisfaction services for 40+ hours of every week of my life to a bureaucracy. Am I nervous? Hell yes. Am I afraid or worried? Not really. And I think the fine distinction between these conditions and the fact that I can find that line is a sign of excellent and ever-improving mental health. Regardless of what the coffee guy might think.