The nursery rhyme’s English translation is “Are you sleeping (Brother John)?”
I’m obviously not sleeping. I wish I were. My body and mind are all over the place. I’m giving my two weeks’ notice at work Monday, and my partner in Canada laid a bombshell on me around the same time I got my welcome letter from job B. We will possibly break ground on our Canadian datacenter in another month or two. It looks like our investors jumped in without blinking. So most likely I’ll be juggling two jobs simultaneously for at least a while. Paid, this time. For both of them.
It’s surreal to see how fast our two-year-old project has revved up. I hadn’t dismissed it outright but I also wasn’t putting all my energy into it because it stalled hard out of the gate. Yeah, yeah, mixed metaphors and other blahty-blah. It was a horse corpse and I was too tired to beat it any more. Except like Mark Twain, rumors of the horse’s death were greatly exaggerated.
Not sure how many people still read this blog. Of those who do, not sure how many have been reading since I still worked in the radio biz. I dealt with a few real corker bosses over the years, some more off the rails than others. One was just an idiot, and I assume he died from the weight of his own stupidity. Two of my other long term bosses were a bit different. Different odd and different because I knew these men for over two decades. One, Bill Taylor, died in 2014. The other, Rich Potyka, died 2012. I knew about Bill because he was infamous. Worked for him the longest. He was one of those love-hate bosses. Completely irrational, utterly lacking in people skills, truly nuts – but if you needed help, he’d give you the shirt off his back. I found Rich’s obit tonight. Rich came across as more stable and rational. It didn’t take me long to discover that was a thin and rotting veneer. Rich had his own demons to deal with. He carried himself like someone who’d had money all his life. He was also an alcoholic and an inveterate liar.
Bill and Rich started off working together, ended up at each other’s throats. The feud was legendary.
I’m grateful for the time I spent in the business. It gave me a shit-ton of experience, polished my writing and people skills, introduced me to a lot of key individuals, and rewrote my perspectives enough to get me future jobs I would otherwise never have pursued. Since I joined both stations when they were startups and literally helped to build them, it also gave me much needed skills in entrepreneurship. I’d already been thrown head-first into the empty pool of startups, but in both these cases the owners arrived with money and education in their back pockets.
I’ve got to call it a night. I’m out of it and have to get up in two hours to go to work. Yee haw. I am so disengaged from the current job already that I’m sorely tempted to bounce out tomorrow, but my bills have other ideas.
The wheel of fate has turned another notch. If I have learned nothing else over the past several years I have learned one important lesson…. things happen well when they are meant to and are a struggle laced with stress when they are not quite ripe and ready.
I’m glad you have investors kicking in on the Canadian project. Start up can be a real bitch and infrastructure is a large hurdle in most projects. I can’t wait to hear how things develop.
Huzzah! Project success and a stay at home gig. Sounds like a perfect match
I know you are counting down the days until you don’t have to be on the road to get to your job any longer. I am sure the next few weeks will be tiresome but you know that in the long run, things should work out FINALLY to make your life much better.
I’m wishing you the best of luck.