I Resigned My Job

Some easy listening for the post.

It's true. I formally resigned my job last Friday. It is the biggest life event to happen to me since I started my job. After almost 4 years with my organization I hit the ceiling for growth and was just treading water. There were no opportunities for advancement, and even so the only promotions I could get would be jobs that would make me miserable. At the same time with the budget reductions I had very little work and was staring down a furlough that was going to cut my pay anyways. It was a good time to leave.

Even so, I'll look back on my first job with a since of thankfulness  I really did cherish the work I did and the people I've worked with. I'm very grateful for the opportunity but I'm also looking forward to doing something different.

The other reason I chose to leave my job is that ever since moving out here I've always dreamed of going back to Ann Arbor for at least a summer. I've decided to spend the summer living in Ann Arbor and travelling around the country visiting friends and family. I'm going to road trip from Seattle to Ann Arbor at the beginning of June, and then planning an east coast road trip for July or August. Then I'm looking at going to Europe in September for Oktoberfest. So if you live in the US, or want to go to Oktoberfest and would like to see me, let me know. I will drive to your house and sleep on your floor.

Eventually I'll need to go back to work. Probably after I return from Oktoberfest. Which also means I'll be looking for a job starting this summer. I've also been thinking about staring an enterprise, which I think would be fulfilling and challenging.

As always, I tell myself that I'm going to blog more. I'm really hoping this is true. To inspire me, I've changed the banner name.

The Championship Post That Wasn't

I spent the last few days thinking about what I would post if Michigan won the National Championship. By the time Michigan was up 1 at halftime I had a pretty good outline of what I was going to write.

I was planning to start with my own history with Michigan BBall during my college years and talk about how I suffered through the Amaker era. I wanted to touch on how during the 2007 season I could just show up to games, flash my MCard and walk down into Maize Rage without a ticket.

I'd tell some of the stories too. About how in 2008 I bet my best friend that we wouldn't be a top 4 seed in the NCAA tournament for the next two years (a bet which I won by the way). How in 2009 Penn State filed a formal complaint with the Big Ten regarding my behavior at one of the games. I wanted to write about how I went down to Crisler in 2009 to watch Michigan get a 10 seed in the selection show and then skipped two days of class to go watch the opening round of the tournament it Kansas City because "who knows the next time Michigan will make the tourney"? It wouldn't all be fun though, I wouldn't overlook having to watch Michigan get bounced out in the first round of the 2012 tourney in Nashville (which I didn't blog about because it was also a bachelor party).

I really wanted wax poetic about the journey the program made between 2008 and now. I wanted to write about Manny Harris, DeShawn Sims and how much hope we had for Zack Novak and Stu Douglass. Then I would transition into how Zack and Stu would have Vogrich type roles with the talent we had on this year's team.

My big gamble would be the centerpiece of the story. About how I was so sure this would be a special team with Trey Burke back that I bet $40 Michigan would win it all before the season began. Yeah, it would be hard not to brag about "calling it" and collecting my $1,000 at the 25:1 odds I got back in September. I'd probably also brag about how my Yahoo bracket of Michigan beating Louisville in the finals put me in the top tenth of the 99th percentile instead of sitting at 88th percentile. I'd ensure the reader that I was never off the bandwagon.

Instead I'm left thinking of all these things, but surprisingly not being that upset (except about all the stupid things I could have spent that grand on). I'm still really proud of how far this team has come since I started going to games in 2007, and I'm even more proud of where this team is going. I'm more excited for the future than nostalgic for the past which has become an ever increasing rarity for me.

Go Blue.