Special Ops Engineering: 14 out of 15

By Friday, I will have spent fourteen of the last fifteen working days on the road, with no office days. Forgive me if I'm feeling a bit grouchy and/or homesick. M spends a lot of his time traveling too. We have two new rookies but that won't help us cover anything for at least three months (more realistically six), and another veteran Special Ops Engineer is transitioning to a new deployment in July.

Shoot me now please.

What does this transition mean for me? I have no idea, since my boss doesn't seem to like talking about manpower shortages or coverage. He's more of a do-what-you-have-to-do-and-stop-complaining sort of guy. I'm more of a tell-me-in-advance-and-no-one-gets-hurt kind of girl. We have issues, and that complicates an already crazy and tumultuous work style... which is about to get loads more fun.

The long and short of this situation is that I'm going to get an "opportunity" to take on more responsibility, whether I like it or not, which may or may not result in a new title and/or a pay increase. Most likely not. My manager also does not like to recognize excellence or promote anyone. I'm also likely to continue my trend of living in hotels and flying on multiple airplanes every frickin' week.

I'm now feeling the irony in the pep talk I gave a coworker a couple weeks ago. Taking this crazy position has freed me from a lot of preconceptions I held about myself and my need for stability, or being a homebody, or feeling incontrovertibly introverted. I've definitely grown as a person and a professional. The challenge has been good for me. But there's a point where challenge for challenge's sake alone becomes annoying rather than transformative. Yeah I can do this (and well at that), but do I really want to?

For now, the answer's yes. For a purely economic reason: I can make enough in this job at my seniority level to support us while M's in school, and until I can replace that in another (more appealing?) position or until M graduates, I'm staying.

Money is not the ends to everything, though. Sometimes I'd like to sleep in my own damn bed ... with M.