I'm not quite sure where better to put this, though I feel it doesn't truly belong here. It is not so much a whimper as it is a dilemma and more of a bind and tough decision(s). But I know I can always trust the Filmspotters out there to at least listen.
As some of you know, I began my first "grown up" job back last February. I love it. The company I work for is great, and the people I work with are great. I love my boss. My position has been some what of a hybrid one. Speaking in generalizations that are specific enough to understand the situation, I work for a software company. I am currently in a group that helps educate the customer on how to generically use the product. But I was hired on to be an on site consultant, meeting with customers, learning their business, and how they should use the software based on their business. So in recent months, I have been travelling quite a bit, and being on the road for whole weeks. I knew this was the goal for my role in the company when I was hired.
I am open minded and wanted to give it a shot and see if I would take to it, even though I had my apprehensions before I started the travelling. I love seeing new places and meeting new people. I am very amiable and make friends quickly; I am not shy about talking to strangers. I am young and unattached (no girlfriend, still live at home - which is another thing, I want to move out, but since I travel so much it doesn't make much financial sense to pay for an apartment when I am only going to be there half the time). These are things that make me a pretty good fit for the job. However, I am a very passionate person, and I am not passionate about this new role I have started to evolve in to. Part of it is the job itself, of which I lack any real confidence. But a lot of it also has to do with the travel. I love my family and friends and being gone all week is tough on my social life. Being single leaves me unattached, but a travelling career may also leave me that way, which is the complete opposite of what I want out of life. I work to live; I am not a workaholic and do not live to work. I have also felt very strung out, stressed and over extended with my feet in both rings at the same time. I find it difficult to get the work done I need to get done in either area since I basically have two jobs now. This is no fun.
As my transition moves forward, I obviously intend to talk to my boss about my future and my feelings on the situation, it is the only logical step. But there is another wrinkle as the company is reorganizing slightly, and the generic education side of things, the side I much prefer and very much enjoy, is falling under new management, completely separate from the other, consulting side. So where it could have been easy to just tell my boss that I prefer to stay on this side of things, now it gets somewhat complicated with the unknown of the reorganization and what would be a new boss if I leave consulting. I am standing on the rope bridge over the middle of a gorge with people cutting from either side. From a fundamental perspective, I am struggling to decide which side I run to, with the thought in the back of my mind that either choice I make, I may still not make it end of the bridge before it gets cut. I don't know if I stay in consulting if I will ever grow to like it, and I don't know anything about what could happen if I stay in education with the uncertainty of the reorganization.
Oh, and my friends and I have started a serious discussion about moving out west somewhere we would be closer to awesome national parks and mountains and such things. The great thing about my job is I can do it remotely when I am not travelling for it, but this discussion just seems to have added pressure to my ultimate decision, even if it doesn't really affect it from a job choice perspective. Deciding to make such a huge life choice, which also seems to go against the whole being away from family and friends qualm, can be stressful. I am very unsure of my future and a lot of it has to do with not quite knowing what I want I suppose.
I'm 24 and at the point in my life where I have the ability to make these huge decisions without too much affect, save the future. But it is definitely difficult finding the right conclusions that will make me happy, which is my main #1 goal.
Thanks for letting me air my thoughts and for any potential advice or thoughtful things you can send my way,
Adam
P.S. And yes, I did just watch Up in the Air to try and find the answers lol. I am a movie buff after all. I am definitely leaning toward one way over the other (towards education), but I also feel I do not want to disappoint my current boss and what she had in mind/expected from me (even though I know this is about me and my future and I shouldn't think about it that way).