Life Goes By So Fast – So Long Travel and Training, and Hello Baton Rouge
By the time this posts, I should be getting ready to take my last trip as a trainer for Nuix.
I’ve shared this news in bits and pieces to some of the people in my life, but now it’s time to go “blog and social media public”, while also explaining a little bit about why. Ironically, this past Monday night, the wife, a friend, and I were down in Eugene to see Social Distortion in concert and the chorus to one of their songs actually summed it up pretty well:
Life goes by so fast
You only want to do what you think is right
Close your eyes and it’s past
Story of my life, la, la, la, la
My professional life has consisted of traveling around and teaching training classes for the last five years, almost three at AccessData and the last two+ at Nuix. During that time, I’ve had some amazing experiences. I’ve gotten to travel to any number of places, learn about the world, and meet a large number of good people. I’ve been to the Panama Canal, the Tower of London, Sydney Harbor, the Twelve Apostles, Lake Zurich, Shakespeare’s grave, a Holocaust memorial in Germany, the Oklahoma City bombing site, the Vietnam Wall in DC on Father’s Day, and countless other places of historical and cultural significance. I’ve experienced the cold of winter in Minneapolis and Oslo, as well as the heat of summer in Houston and Las Vegas. I’ve lifted pints and talked politics in Australia, watched Champions League football with Europeans in Frankfurt, talked hockey with Stars season ticket holders in Dallas, had lunch with someone who grew up in the Canal Zone as an American and has been there through the whole turnover, and swapped war stories with more really smart eDiscovery professionals than I could ever begin to count.
And I was getting paid to do it!
Don’t think for a second that I have ever taken that for granted. It’s been an amazing adventure.
But, there was also a price. For the last five years my life has not looked anything like many other people’s lives. In good ways, which I’ve given you some examples of, but also in bad ways. I’ve missed a lot over the last five years too. It has gone by so fast. That’s a lot of time spent away from my wife, my family, my friends. That’s a lot of time spent in airports, in airplane seats, eating crappy airport food, or cramming into trains and buses with luggage. It’s five years of sleeping in hotels, living out of suitcases, not exercising properly, losing sleep, jet lag, and on and on. It’s been five years of not being able to plan any social event very far in advance, or having to make them flexible because my schedule changed and I’m no longer going to be home. It’s been five years of not developing a lot of new friendships locally beyond the people my wife knows, who are awesome, but still. 😉
It’s been almost three years of Corvallis being my official residence, yet I still don’t know my way around town very well!
That’s a whole lot of “not normal”, and after five years, I’m ready for some normal. I’m ready for a 9-5 job, being home in the evenings, buying concert tickets without having a backup plan in case I can’t go, hitting up happy hour, knowing that friends and family can come visit us, and I’ll actually be there to spend time with them, and doing all the boring, routine, things that have not been part of my life much. Grocery shopping? What’s that? Ha!
More importantly, for Angela and I, it’s time to be closer to family. So, not only does this career change involve me going back to work in a law firm, and trying to make my life more normal, or as normal as you can get while working in a law firm, it also involves working and living in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Similar to what I said about my career over the last 5 years, these last few years in Oregon have also been filled with some amazing stuff. I’m going to miss the Oregon Coast, the Cascade Mountains, the Columbia River Gorge. I’m going to miss Oakshire Brewery’s Espresso Stout on tap with BBQ chicken tenders at Downward Dog Pub. I’m going to miss some people I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know here. People who have helped us deal with my lifestyle in the time we’ve been here by looking out for my wife, and who I can never thank enough for that. Some strange part of me will probably even miss the Portland Airport. God knows I’ve been there often enough!
I will not, however, miss the cold rain that falls almost constantly through the fall and winter.
Again though, those things have come at a price. Being over 2,000 miles and 2-3 time zones away from your family and some of your closest friends takes a toll, especially when your spouse is also away as much as I’ve been. I don’t think I will ever truly understand how difficult that has been. I will never be able to thank Angela enough for braving through it so that I could have the opportunities that I have had. I owe her some normal, a billion times over.
As for the details, my time at Nuix ends at the end of March. My time at my new job starts April 17. The first week of April will involve me packing up, taking care of some things in Oregon, and saying goodbye, hopefully, to our friends here. The second week in April will see me making another long drive to Louisiana! Angela will follow at some point in the near future, June at the latest.
The next couple of months might not look “normal” either as we make this transition and settle in to our latest home town, but I know that’s where we’re headed, and I’m excited for that. I’m excited to step back into a law firm environment with all of the knowledge I’ve gained from working with many of you over the last five years, and using that knowledge to help a new group of people. In some ways, while I’m leaving “training” behind, I’ll never truly leave it behind. I’ll always be about learning new things and helping other people understand and make good use of them. I’ll just be down in the trenches doing it again instead of in the classroom. That’s good. I don’t want to lose touch with what’s happening down here.
Also, I’m excited for etoufee, and beignets, and weekend trips to New Orleans for the live music. I hope some of you will come visit and join us in those things.
