What a long road it has been since my last posting on this. Long, and yet the road went where it was supposed to go, and got me there in time, albeit just in the nick of. More than that: the road ran just about as I thought it would, with mile markers about where I'd expected them, and nary a decreasing-radius turn (my father's most detested of highway design miscegenations; mine, too, having ridden a motorcycle for some years). I did not crash, I did not miss my exit, I did not run out of gas...though the warning light had quite unambiguously flared on.
I think of myself as a planner, but in truth most of the "big" things I have done were executed with very little forethought, and most of the "big" decisions made on the basis of embarrassingly trivial factors. Abandon a career in historiography: no plan. Spend a decade as an independent consultant: no plan. Amsterdam: no plan. This time, though, I had a plan, and on top of the great relief at exiting this period of relative penury and excessive parenting, enhancing the genuine excitement at the prospect of new intellectual challenges, there is a certain feeling of exultation at having seen my plan succeed.
I guess the real reason I think of myself as a planner is that planning successfully is what I most admire in others. I think here most immediately of my mother-in-law who has on more than one occasion produced an artifact, stored for years or even decades, at exactly the right moment, and transferred it to someone (typically one of her children, of course) who is just as grateful as she imagined they would be when archiving the item all that time ago. There is something to it of Roger Staubach's perfectly executed Hail Mary pass in the 1975 NFC Divisional Playoff (he says, displaying nothing but his ability to click on a highly ranked item in Google's search), that is to say a wonderful mix of daring, preparation, and luck.
But given the title of this post I suppose I really should be talking about the job and about how, in the end, I got it. The story is simply told, especially if one is willing to simplify: the company I had in my sights had provided any number (well, nine actually) of "informational interviews" (plus two more after I had applied for the job, and that's not including communications with recruiters), and while most of those had concluded with mutual agreement that the company would be well served in employing me, none of them had actually led to that end. Along the way, though, a job opening was posted for which I was well suited and to which I applied. In addition to submitting the resume and cover letter I marshaled my forces, who started bombarding the hiring manager for this position with recommendations. Impressed by my network (which included, among others, her boss) she agreed to interview me, and the rest is history.
As if. You may recall (I know you don't, and yet it seems the right thing to say) my comments about how tortuous and dysfunctional the "hiring" process has become, and indeed it proved true here, too. I submitted my resume and cover letter, and had I left it at that I never would have heard another thing: the recruiting intermediary, for reasons I will not speculate on here, did not act on my resume until specifically ordered to do so by members of my Hiring Team. There have been and will prove to be yet more benefits of having infiltrated this organization, but the most immediate one was that it saved me at this critical juncture from falling between the cracks.
I am to start my job on the third of January. I will assume the role of Senior Analyst, which is to say I will help the business understand itself, and will translate its desires as needed into plans and designs. Flatteringly, people seem excited at the prospect. We are rearranging our child care, shopping for a commuter's dream bike (30 minutes each way, 20 if I really lean on the electric assist), and trying to get Gideon to sleep through the night. Come January I will spend a good deal less time walking these village streets, but I will do so free of the haunting sense that I am living here on borrowed time.
