Decisions

I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week, sometimes, to make it up.
-- Mark Twain

Thursday, May 6, 1999

I feel slightly guilty. It's been a week since my neighbor across the hall went to the hospital, and I haven't called to see how he's doing. I know he hasn't come home yet. We aren't close at all, but it would be a good thing to let the building know. I'd write it on the whiteboard in the hall. But it's too late to call tonight, and I don't expect to be back here tomorrow afternoon; Jack and I will probably go see The Mummy.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *    *

I have a tough decision to make. Or maybe I've already made it. My current manager stopped by to talk to me. I'd been trying to catch her for a while, to talk about some changes we need to make to our intranet site to move on to the next version of our product, but she had another topic in mind.

It turns out that because of various ways our team is going to be reorganized, it makes sense that I should report to someone different. Some of the work I've been doing will be reassigned, and I'll pick up some new responsibilities, too.

But I do have some qualms about these changes, beyond my reluctance to changing things. The team I'd be concentrating my work on has been through a devastating reorg, and there are political currents beyond that which concern me. On the upside, the new person who I'd be reporting to thinks highly of me, I already know that. But the gaps in our team, the fact that the remaining team members are overloaded -- I get a very queasy feeling about this.

So I called a friend who has worked with the new manager before, and we met for coffee. I asked her to make it clearer to me why she thought the new manager was great. I shared my concerns about the team, the manager, the job, how it fits in the overall picture.

In the end, though, I think this is a challenge that I'll have to take. It could lead to a full-time position for me, which I've wanted for a long time.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *    *

The schedule for the film festival has been released, but it's not easy to sort through on the festival site. The Seattle Weekly has some good coverage. I don't have a paper copy of the schedule, yet, to mark up and circle and cross out, and I've been too busy at work to read through the list online, so I really don't have many ideas about what I want to see. I went ahead and joined the Fool Serious discussion list. I hope we have some good discussions there! But it's likely that I won't see as many movies as I have in previous years; other things that are happpening this month will need my attention.