Lately, Jameson has just been so happy. It’s been wonderful, and we love our evenings together.

I’ve recently also been thinking about our life, in relation to work. There have been a lot of changes at my job recently, and I would be lying if I didn’t say that those also effect family life, and occupy a lot of my thoughts.

A couple of weeks ago, my boss quit all of a sudden, giving one week notice to us. Since then, there have been a lot of conversations about possibly restructuring the team, moving my one other full time teammate into a new role, and a consultant even came in with his recommendations as to how the entire department should be structured.

I have to say, I am a little tired of it all.

But through this has come up the possibility of me trying to take on a manager role, applying if I was interested. And for the first time, I feel like I am choosing family over my career, because I am not going to apply, and several times over have said that I am not interested.

I’ve been a little overclear. I don’t typically hide what I mean. I don’t want to work longer hours, and I don’t want to work directly for our VP. Not because he’s a bad person, but because he is a manager of managers, and I am not ready or willing to take on that kind of responsibility.

My old boss from several jobs ago laid it out like this:

All of these things: self, job and family, need to be in balance with each other. If something gets out of balance, life is out of balance.

Right now, I have balance.

I come home in the evenings and play with Jameson for the 1-1/2 hours we have together. He’s a joy right now, and I love it. I have time to spend with Brian, and time for myself working on this blog or photography or other crafts. I am content.

I am not saying that changing my position right now would put me out of balance (it would, for a while, but eventually I would find it back). I am just saying that I see no sound reason to make the change right now. I’m not ready for it, I don’t want it, and that would make me the worst kind of manager ever.

So things are in flux, and my position might change anyway to something more suitable in whatever new structure we decide to go for. Maybe my old boss from jobs ago, who is now a consultant here, maybe he’ll be able to step up into that role. Maybe someone else worse will, or someone else better. Unfortunately, I have to accept that changes are coming, no matter what.