what’s that they say?

Time flies when you’re having fun, I believe.

It’s been well over 6 months since my last post and my life has drastically changed during that time. In more ways than one. The obvious one is a move from Oregon to Washington to take over the management of a convention center north of Seattle.

Oh, yes, I guess I never announced that on here. Since my last post, I was head hunted, pushed into a whirlwind of interviews, and then presented with an offer I just couldn’t refuse… and just like that, add General Manager of a convention center to my resume.

This has, by far, been the most challenging job transition I’ve experienced. This has pushed me in more ways than I expected but in ways I wouldn’t trade for anything else. It’s been a great lesson, though, that my professional value was still there despite the fallout from the pandemic. Some people get that, some call me dramatic, but as I watched peers continue to work, grow and even get promoted as people retired out of the industry, I felt I was on the outside looking in. It was hard for me to experience (different people would have experienced that in different ways). I’ve always found a way to succeed in the past but professional success seemed so out of reach for over 2 years.

And let me be 100% honest with you – I wasn’t applying for jobs for quite a while. So sure, I was my own worst enemy. I’d given up and was content working from home, in my sweat pants, sitting in front of my little webcam logging my hours and doing what I had to… but it wasn’t what I wanted. Not then, anyways. This job is EXACTLY what I wanted. I blogged this past year about the aftermath of a tornado… and was that what I wanted back. For now, yes, it’s absolutely what I want.

In case an out of state move and new job wasn’t enough, we decided to sell our house in Oregon, temporarily live in furnished housing in a high rise condo, change our minds and decide to lease our house in Oregon (we’ll never get property on the West Coast for that price again), move into a hotel, finally find a house to rent to live in, take well over a month to move in, travel to the Gorge for Labor Day weekend, fix every little thing in our house that we’d put off for 7 years, attend a couple of conferences, and head to NYC for 2 concerts at Madison Square Garden all within a 4 month span.

Those 4 months seemed like a lifetime. Actually, this past year seems like 4 lifetimes. I couldn’t have predicted what this year brought me both professionally and personally. I always say you’ll never know what is just around the corner.

I’m going back to something from my last post: And there’s fear in the potential ending of this offseason. Fear of change. Fear of leaving something… a place that ushered so much change and growth in me behind… just a fear of what’s out there next. But that fear can keep us from experiencing what is truly for us, I suppose, so best try and listen to it just a little but shut it up before it gets too loud and prevents you from doing something amazing.

So make sure an have an open heart, it might just run into that something amazing when you least expect it.

Here we are at the end of the holidays – it’s all flown by as they tend to do. I’m facing a long weekend for New Years and am looking forward to savoring it. Maybe Rocky and I will go on an adventure to the islands, or to find a hike, or perhaps just a wine tasting at a local winery. I’ll tell you this much, this weekend will not include an alarm clock.

Cheers to 2023… may it surprise me just as much as 2022 did.