Gutsy move? Only time will tell...

This week is my last at work. On August 13, I told my boss that I was leaving, and I told him why. It wasn't that I didn't like the team, or the challenges, or the company. It's the type of work we do that I don't like and unfortunately, that's really hard to change unless you move on to another position in another company. I don't have another position in mind yet, even less another company, but I knew it was time to leave. So I did.

Don't get me wrong. I work with good people. But I also work with workaholics. Nothing wrong with being a dedicated worker if you are passionate about what you are doing. I wasn't. There is no half measure in my line of work, you either love it, or you don't. I didn't. I didn't like that we did all this research, thinking, analyzing, interviewing, and reporting only to leave at what I consider the most critical time: execution. I realized that I am an action-oriented woman. Give me a task, and I'll get it done. When my task is to make recommendations that I will never see being implemented (because we leave the client with this part of the task), I feel very detached from my work. It's too abstract, too theoretical.

I also didn't like the short-term relationships we developed with clients. Part of helping a team or a company realize something is to understand their culture and the rich web of relationships that exist between people. When you work with a clients for a few months, and most of the time from a distance, you cannot understand culture. Or maybe others can, but not me. I'd like to have a more personal relationship with the people I work with, be it clients or coworkers. But that wasn't possible in my line of work.

There were other reasons for deciding to leave, but these were the main ones. And one week before my last day, I feel that more than ever, I've made the right decision. I also took the time to sit down with each of my colleagues to explain to them why I was leaving. I work with smart, exceptional folks and I don't want to leave in bad terms, with lots of questions hanging about my motives.

Today, I updated my status in Facebook to let friends and family know what I had decided to do. I was really surprised by the show of support and the well-wishing tone of the comments overall. Not that I doubt the support of my friends, but at the same time I was wondering if anyone would ask why, wonder about my sanity for doing this. Nobody did.

Last week. Doesn't feel different. It will next Monday...

Thank goodness for fans

It's hot tonight, really hot. We had a formidable storm around 7 p.m., with hail and a heavy downpour. Somehow, it didn't clear all the mugginess that's been accumulating all day. The heat makes me sleepy, I'm think I'm gonna head to bed early for a change.

I'm thinking about a lot of things lately. Coordinating two moves (stuff from Vancouver coming back to Montreal and stuff in Montreal moving to the new place), changing my address all over the place, but also I've been wondering how come I haven't been spending much time with friends. We're all pretty busy, that's understandable, but I think there's more to it than packed schedules. I cannot speak for my friends, but I do know that I've been feeling rather tired these days. I think work has a lot to do with it.

I haven't been terribly happy with work, I'm realising that maybe consulting is not really my cup of tea. There are things I work on that really interest me, but the entire context under which the work is undertaken does not appeal to me. Consulting is a lot of politics and really more a sales job than I thought it would be. Fortunately, at my level, we do not have sales targets, but as I look at the career path that awaits me if I do well and one day get promoted, and it's all about selling. I'm not a sales person. My brother is a natural at sales, but I'm not. Well, I can get people interested in something, and I have managed to raise quite a bit of money for breast cancer over the past few years, but it's just not the same.

I'm thinking that I might start looking around at what else is available. It's the summer now, not a good time to look for work, but come September, kids will go back to school and business will return to normal.

I'm a bit sadden that I feel this way about my new job, but at the same time, when your heart is not there, it's really hard to get through the day. And right now, I'm working on a really stressful project while trying to wrap up two others, so it doesn't help. I end up working nights, evenings and weekends.

Maybe I'll even take a break in September. With a bit of money coming in from the sale of the condo, I might be able to manage a few weeks off. Since Christmas, I have only taken a week off to visit Vancouver and half of that week was spent taking care of unfinished renos and other errands to get the condo on the market.

Now, quick shower before going to bed and I'm sleeping with the fan on tonight. So happy my apartment has a ceiling fan in the bedroom, woot!

Day 1

Even though I've been working at the new job for four months now, today felt like the first day where I was doing what it is that we do (or are supposed to do). My first mandate in Halifax wasn't entirely a "typical" mandate and although it kept me busy and had me log a lot of billable hours, it shielded me from some of the regular activities undertaken by my team. How can I explain this... Imagine information as water. Imagine a hose, heavy pressure, wide diametre, being fed by ten or twenty sources. Imagine the pressure at the other end when you are responsible for receiving the rush of water and transforming it in a mist gentle enough (and at the right temperature) to spray a delicate orchid. Repeat daily.

That's how it felt.

The biggest problem when you join a firm in the knowledge industry is that there is a LOT of existing knowledge already developed and the biggest challenge is finding the right pieces to repurpose, reuse, or further develop, and as fast as possible.

To my colleagues, this must feel almost natural but to me, it's as if this was my very first day in the office. Maybe it is.

Tonight, however, I have to admit that I was happy to be home after work and to prepare myself a tasty dinner (I bought some groceries this weekend and cooked a bit). This morning, I loved being able to pick an outfit from my closet and then change my mind about it. Not something you can pull off when living out of a suitcase.

Hello Montreal. I'm happy to be spending some time with you for a little while.

Last night

Tonight is my last night in Halifax. My mandate ends tomorrow, I fly back home late afternoon (fingers crossed that the snow doesn't delay flights too much) and then will be staffed on a mandate in Montreal for a few months. As I sit on the bed at the hotel, finishing some odd tasks for work, with my nose itchy from the dry air, I'm also thinking about all the things I never had a chance to get started since I moved back. For instance, I miss climbing and I feel like I need to get back into a regular exercise program. I've been looking at the downtown YMCA schedule, the gym is close to work and has a pool. Swimming is a great exercise, it would feel great to do laps a few times per week.

I'm also feeling a bit of pressure about the climbing since my good friend Typhanie, who was away in Burkina Faso for 18 months, is moving to Montreal in March or April. Typhanie is an awesome climber, I look forward to have the opportunity to learn from her again. Obviously, it would help to rebuild the climbing muscles a bit before she arrives. I'll make it a point to visit Allez Up this weekend, a climbing gym in my area.

I'll tell you a story

Just as I am settling down after a day spent doing laundry, dusting, cleaning, and catching up with some work, I realize it's already time to pack the suitcase for another trip to the Maritimes. This week is the last that I am traveling to Halifax this year. I return on Thursday and then get to enjoy two weeks without dealing with winter travel. Bliss.

My place is quiet during the day, and once I made myself a cup of coffee, set the laptop on the kitchen table and sat down in front of the computer, I was able to get quite a bit of work done. I have a presentation to give on Thursday and coming up with the narrative is very hard when I'm in the office. There are too many interruptions, whether I'm working in the project room in Halifax or at my desk at PVM. I've seen a few of the presentations put together by colleagues for other clients, and the bar is set high. Forget death by PowerPoint: the slides we are expected to prepare for clients read like stories and are graphically very striking. Fortunately, I have a few decks of sample slides to use for inspiration (and also to save me time when "designing" slides). Thinking of a presentation like a story is really helpful and every time I create a slide I've been asking myself "so what?" It's one thing to show how the client's revenue has grown over the years, it's another to tie that growth (or absence thereof) to revenue trends of their competitors, the industry, etc. So much more relevant, but also so much more work.

Speaking of stories, I also need to start planning for a couple of white paper abstracts I am submitting with one of the Directors. My company is organizing a white paper contest and the contest is a great opportunity to get your name out there. The 800-word abstracts are due December 19, and if our abstract is selected by the jury, we submit the full paper some time in the spring. Not only do winning authors get prizes, but their papers are also published on our web site and distributed to clients.

It's snowing again? I wonder what the weather is like in Halifax. Last week, while Montreal was struggling with the first big snowfall of the season, we were dealing with rainstorms. It was raining so hard one evening I thought someone was washing the windows of the hotel with a pressure-washer.

Living out of a suitcase

I am back in Montreal but I only live here part time. That's because I spend my weeks in the Maritimes, Halifax to be more specific, working at a client site. The job is interesting, lots of project management, some business intelligence, a bit of strategy...

My first week away was very tiring. There's something about living in a hotel that can pretty much guarantee that you don't exactly sleep soundly. You hear noises in the corridor, the pillow is too hard, the air too dry... And for a week, I lived pretty much the opposite of how I've lived in the past six years. I had a car to drive to work every day, and also to drive to the local malls to grab whatever seemed a tad healthy out of a fast-food menu. I didn't have my travel mug so I bought coffee in disposable cups. I had no time to prepare before I left... there had to be a better way.

Week 2 was also spent at the hotel, but this time I asked to have a fridge in my room ($5 extra / day, well worth it) and I went to the Superstore on the first evening (think Loblaws) to buy yogourt, blueberries, granola and orange juice for breakfast, and whole wheet pita, cold cuts, cheese, humus and some lettuce for lunches. OK, my diet was pretty much the same every day, but at least the meals were a lot healthier. I ate out in the evening. I also made my way to the hotel's gym (a tiny room where about two people can exercise at the same time, but it was empty when I went) one evening.

Week 3 (this week) will be shorter, as I am flying back to Montreal Thursday evening. I am trying to spend some time in the Montreal office so my colleagues don't completely forget about me :-) Starting in November, I will probably live in a furnished apartment in Halifax, with a kitchen so I can cook meals, not just eat cold stuff. And I will spend a weekend now and then in Nova Scotia, to visit the area and avoid having to fly every single week. My carbon footprint is going to be terrible this year.

Any suggestions on things to see while in Nova Scotia? I'd like to drive to Cape Breton and do the Cabot Trail, maybe a weekend in early November. The view should be stunning, now that the trees have lost most of their leaves. I will also spend time around Halifax. My current hotel is close to the client site, but not exactly downtown, so I haven't seen the harbour and haven't walked around the city yet. Things to look forward to.

Funny thing isn't it? I'm spending my first few months of rediscovering my home town actually discovering a new city.