In Summary

The reason why I started writing all of this was to document for myself the many ways God worked in this process.  I’m very much like the proverbial man who looks in the mirror and forgets what he looks like, even more so in forgetting the great indebtedness I have to God for the many times He intervenes in my life.

To begin with, there was the whole bit about my manager being a butthead to me in the summer*.  I’m very much a loyalist and prone to learning to live with dysfunctional environments, so without this event I might have never kicked myself out of the nest.  The timing is also a consideration, as are many things.  Had this happened in the spring I wouldn’t have been looking at Linked during the time period when Scott posted that he was leaving.  Had it happened in the fall it would have been too late.  People say that God’s timing is perfect and normally I’m prone to poo-poo these people, but maybe, just maybe, they are correct.

The second thing was the just mentioned post by Scott, which prompted the lunch meeting and gave me a direction of where to search.  Before this I was just a “guy who worked in tech but wasn’t a techie” and was fairly certain that my next job would not be in computers, so low was my estimation of my abilities thanks to a decade plus of neglect.

Number three would be the sudden urgency to get my resume and cover letter completed quickly, even though I had a number of months before I could switch jobs.  If not for getting the resume in that quickly my current job might have gone back to Scott.  Again, that timing knack God has.

A final thing (though surely there are more and I’m just too blind to see them) was getting an interview AND a job offer on my first attempt**.  I didn’t have the emotional reserves to take much rejection and had that occurred I might have slumped into depression and given myself up to my current lot, performing worse and worse until I was fired. 

So thanks God!  Thanks for pulling me through the rough times and growing me and eventually landing me in a position that is both challenging and enjoyable.

 

1/4/22 - A late addition!  Over the past few years I had asked God many times that He would pull me out of that place before it imploded.  I just learned that the head programmer of the "new solution" had left for greener pastures.  The deadline for implementing this was going to be a huge stretch and now it's completely blown out of the water.  Plus a co-worker in my department has/is been out for about a month with a surgery.  This would definitely not have been an enjoyable place to work these past two months. 

 

 

* At one point my wife told me about a conversation she had with our son, about how “something had changed with dad and work about two months ago.”  I went back and checked the date of the message where my manager accused “Did you add this…” and it was almost two months exactly.

** And boy did THAT boost my self-esteem.  Someone wanted my skills and abilities!  Take THAT, Mr. ex-“manager”.