#oneyear – The Boring Old Man

Today was my last day at my “new” job. Although I didn’t plan it out this way, my last day is EXACTLY one year apart from my first day at this place – August 28, 2025 to August 28, 2026.

I have never, and I do mean never, held a job as an adult for this short amount of time before, and I feel kinda weird about it. Even my last “temporary” job, that was supposed to be a 3 – 6 month gig, turned into a year and 5 months… But I guess this is the world we live in nowadays. I’d estimate my average tenure at a job is 6 years, and I’d fully intended to stay at this one until I hit retirement age – which would be somewhere around 10 years – and I missed that mark by a WIDE margin. But if I’ve learned anything in my work life, it’s that staying for the sake of staying and hoping things improve is a mistake. In those situations the juice is never worth the squeeze.

I knew coming in that it was gonna be hard here. And it was. Much harder than I anticipated in fact. But it was also fun. I had a great boss that “got it” and knew what we were up against – years of neglect and a constant churn of staff, and the place was nearly off the rails. But we were all on the same page, we had assembled a great new team and we were crushing it daily and turning this place around. We were making an impact and every metric pointed to us moving in the right direction. So much so, that the ownership decided to pull the plug on the existing management team and “self manage” the operation. They pulled the rug out from under us with 29 days notice, sent my great boss to another property and installed a new one from their internal team, who promptly let go of some of our great team and imposed his will on every aspect of the operation, while placing undue blame on the rest of us that had pulled this place outta the sewer and made it profitable and an exciting place to be. He not only let the wind out of our sails, he sucked the very life outta the place. In three short months, he undid what we’d spent 8 months building and I reached the conclusion that the fork in the road I’d been forced into, was NOT the path I wanted to be on.

As luck (?) would have it, two days after I’d decided that it was time to pack it in at this place, I got a call from an old boss of mine. He was in a new facility and needed somebody with my particular skill set. A round of interviews were set in motion, I had to go through background checks, fingerprinting, drug screen and all that good stuff, and I dropped my notice of resignation on the new boss’s desk.

I’m leaving behind some really great people; colleagues that I hope to stay in touch with for the long haul, a couple guys that I hired that I really, really like and an absolutely gorgeous building, but I knew I would come to despise the place if I stayed there. Simple as that. But I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in months, my diet and exercise routine has gone to hell and I’m constantly stressed. That’s no way to live, and I’m too old to go down that path again.

So the new gig starts Monday. I’m quite anxious about it honestly as I swore I’d never go back into the “healthcare adjacent” field after my experiences during The Plague, but they kinda made me an offer I couldn’t refuse… I always had a good rapport with this former boss I’ll be working with, two of the guys on my team there are guys that I personally hired at other facilities in the past and they’re both outstanding at what they do. My daily commute will be less than half of what it is at my current place, I’ll get my.preferred health benefits package back (that was ALSO snatched away during the management transition at the current job) and my paychecks will be a bit fatter. On paper it’s a no-brainer. I just need to get myself back into the mindset of bureaucracy and endless regulations. I ain’t skeered of it – I spent 17 years of my life in that world – but I’ve been out of it for 2 1/2 years now, and it’s absolutely gonna be an adjustment to pick up where I left off.

Things might get a little (more) quiet on these pages as I re-adjust to my new reality, but I’ll be back, and better than ever I expect.

And for the sake of my diminishing memory banks, I’m gonna add some behind the scenes pics from this place with the hope that, in time, I’ll come to remember it fondly…