Career decisions

I withdrew from a job process this week, for a role I was genuinely excited about, which has had me feeling a little disappointed with the week.

The organisation ticked almost every box, including a solid Glassdoor rating. The role looked interesting, the boss's LinkedIn profile looked promising, and the conversations with the recruiter had been great. And then I sat down over the Easter long weekend with a bunch of solid Red Tulip Easter eggs and a glass of wine and started to think about the commute, which I'd pushed aside in my excitement about the role - 40 kilometres from home on a toll road and no public transport options.

The thing is, I already knew how this ends, because I worked in that exact location 25 years ago when I was considerably younger and it was theoretically much easier. At the end of that contract they wanted to extend and I just couldn't do it, because I'd started to detest the driving and it was wearing me down. I swore I'd never work there again.

And yet there I was, genuinely considering it, because I'd let the excitement of a potentially great role do the thinking for me, instead of using the part of my brain that remembers what it actually feels like to crawl home on the freeway on a rainy dark night in the middle of July, on repeat.

Withdrawing wasn't easy, especially with an interview already scheduled. But I just knew that three months in, things would feel even harder.

I joke about "old age" but it's actually great to be in a place to still feel the excitement, have the experience to sit with it for a bit and then apply some logic, and end up in the best place for right now. 😊 

Happy Friday 🍷 

This article was first published on LinkedIn