A New Chapter

Start a new chapter
Find what I'm after
It's changing every day
The change of a season
Is enough of a reason
To want to get away
One of my relatives just turned 30 and she had a nice outlook on her big birthday -- she said she saw it as an opportunity to start a new part of her life. Her 29th year was filled with some work related uncertainty and she felt like the timing of her birthday coincided with a new job and some other changes nicely.


I have a significant birthday coming out in October -- I'll be 40! I'm now thinking that for me 40 will also be a good turning point. I'm going to get back to aggressively "challenging" my anxiety and trying to over come my inability to tide on the subway. Even if that means having some failures that include having anxiety attacks. I used to get migraine headaches a few times a year (over the past four years I've only had two) and after the first few that really freaked me out I learned how to handle them and so, although they were unpleasant, they just became an annoyance, not a "big deal". I always thought I would get to that point with the anxiety attacks. My goal is to get to that point now.


*The lyrics at the top of this post are from the song "Fly By Night" by Rush

Some Transitions Are Good!

On Friday I met with my new boss and got a promotion and a raise! I'm quite excited - but also a little nervous. The reason I have a new boss is that when my company was acquired my current boss was given the option to move into a more long term strategic / planning role and along with that was the opportunity to move he and his family to London so he jumped at the chance.


Anyway, when my boss told me of his transition I made he and others aware that I thought I would be a good candidate to take over for him as the "leader" of our development team. At first it looked like this wasn't going to happen -- we had been told that we, the development team, would all report to someone else. So that someone else is my new boss.


However, when I met with him on Friday he told me he was glad to learn that I was interested in becoming the team leader and that he was really hoping to rely on me for a lot of help and guidance on the internal transition of our companies following the acquisition.


Now the reason I'm a little nervous about the promotion is that it MAY require some travel. And as you all know, I'm not a great traveler right now. My old boss knew about my anxiety but I'm pretty sure he has not mentioned it to anyone else. There is no travel on the radar at the moment but its something I have to think about and figure out how to handle if / when it comes up.