How do you choose when you know all the options are good?

January 18th, 2018 the company I’ve worked for since 2015 sold.

Two months later there is still a ton to do. Finalizing the deal price, transferring the shareholders, informing our customers, switching over expenses, closing bank accounts… I’m starting to almost see an end in sight, but after working non stop for months before and months after, maybe I’m just looking harder for the end because I need it.

Even before this deal came through I wanted something to change. I’d been feeling slightly wasted in my potential, feeling like there wasn’t anywhere I wanted to grow into, any person who I could learn any more from, any company culture that made me excited to go to work each day. But I also had it really good, flexible hours, no supervision, casual dress code, good location. When we sold I was relieved, glad I wouldn’t have to leave them of my own volition, but worried also, that my flexible livelihood would change.

Our new company is based in California and they promised to keep everything the same in our Utah location – giving us a few new responsibilities but allowing us to stay where we are and do what we do. This applies to everyone except me of course, since most of my job has been trying to make our company functional enough to be purchased. Now that we’ve succeeded and technically no longer exist, most of my job duties are being absorbed by our new owners. We no longer need to maintain financial projections or to invoice customers, to pay bills or employees, keep up with legal/tax/HR regulations, or… do what we can to make the rest of the company run smoothly.

This last piece has been what I spend most of my time on, and has been the hardest for me to explain. To family, friends, and even this new company – I’ve always had trouble putting into words what I do. At work I’ve never had to explain what I do, my coworkers see the results, are the ones who benefit from my actions. But the visibility into what I am and what I do is vastly different for the 5 or 10 people who’ve interacted with me daily for 3 years as compared to a 300 person company I’ve worked with for a very short amount of time.

In last few months I’ve been so busy with deal terms and transfer items I’ve been largely invisible to all the departments of our new entity. Sure I’m cc’d on a few emails and am often the root of all the answers to all their questions, but I’m a level under the surface, busy making things happen instead of talking new people through what could be. And when I am picked up on someone’s radar one of my titles usually pops up and then they place me in that box (office manager, accounts payable, invoicing, contracting, HR). All these things are done by one person in most of these people’s worlds, the second they hear one of those buzz words, their brain is grateful to put me in that box.

All of this is understandable, and I haven’t been the most aggressive at making my presence and value known(going to Korea for two weeks in Feb didn’t help), so I knew I wanted to spend a few weeks living in California and feeling out the departments and getting to know my new owners. I figured this was as much an interview process for them as it was for me, I’m a hard enough worker and a intelligent enough human that I know I can do well in whatever position they put in – but hopefully being in person will make it easier to find something I’d like best first.

I’ve been here two weeks and I walked into way more than I ever expected. Naively I thought a 300 person company based in an expensive California town would have most of their shit together. The reality is their accounting department is painfully overworked and inefficient, their contracting department is less standardized than mine was, and their HR department spends more time making fun of people behind their back than helping making a decent company culture. Their coders and QA know nothing about software (they are a hardware company who just bought their first software company, us) and there is a giant disconnect between the sales/executives and the people who actually get things done.

I know this is because they’re growing fast. They just got a ton of new investment money, allowing them to buy us as well as making plans to buy a few other companies on their radar. They, like me, made processes that best fit them for the time, and now that things are changing fast – they have a lot to do to catch up.

To be honest I’m completely freaked out. I’ve worked 8am to 8pm most days I’ve been here – which is fine because it is mostly things I want to get done and understand are unique to this time of transition, but the accounting team works just as much and says that its been like this for years without change. The meetings I’ve been in so far are filled with people who I feel like aren’t taking initiative to actually make things happen, everyone is confined to their own world and the executives who should be seeing it all from above are too busy looking to the future to care what is going on now.

My worry is that I know myself, and I do not do well at working in a place I don’t feel like I can improve. If my friends are fighting I get involved and do what I can to fix it. If my brother is making dumb choices, I find a way to tell him so he’ll hear me. If my company isn’t running things in a way that employees have a good place to voice their concerns or offer their solutions, then I can’t work there. So far here, there isn’t any watchdog or overseer that I think takes responsibility for all these problems that I’ve noticed in the two weeks I’ve been here. Each department knows their failings, but they mostly just blame the other sections and shrug their shoulders, saying well its just the way it is. I’m shocked to see how little the departments intersect, and how little avenues there are to improve it.

So when a random guy told me last week that he’d been hoping to find someone like me for a new job he was creating, I was listening. He found me by chance, trying to get the answers about what specific products need to exist for invoicing and I was around and answered the question he’d been trying to figure out for weeks in less than ten seconds. I told him a three sentence pitch of who I was and what I’ve been doing and he then made it clear that we’d need to talk later, because he was looking for people like me.

Apparently he’s in charge of product operations, which means he connects the people who build the product with the people who sell it. He is a little eccentric, already telling me multiple times that people don’t like him and that I’m the kind of person he’s looking for that can be both creative and process oriented instead of one of the other. And while he’s telling me things that are fun to hear, I’m also hearing that the type of job he wants me to do will require me to be pretty aggressive in launching myself into problems so I can fix them, that it is a new thing that people haven’t been accustomed to answering to.

He told me that he’s gotten approval to create a new department in our organization, one that becomes the link between all the departments, and that he is about to add a job request to the website for a technical product manager a position that he is optimistic I could fill. He thinks we need someone aware/social/vocal enough to demand the right people to get the job done, but technical enough to fill in the details ourselves.

The way he speaks is my language, all those phrases of creativity and technicality coming together in some balanced, efficient harmony. But he’s also fairly.. oily, like a sales person I’m cautious to trust. Other people have visibly rolled their eyes in his presence, showing me that he’s barged in to their lives and made trouble before. I don’t know what to believe, the rational, steady people that I watch toiling away in such an incredibly unhealthy and unhappy way, or this somewhat volatile personality who is staying things that make sense and attempting to change what is a clearly broken place of work.

I keep repeating to myself that it isn’t my job to save everyone, and that any company has its failings and successes. But what I don’t know is if this is my chance to insert myself into a real company with real career potential or if it just a chance for my heart to break as I realize I can’t make as much difference as I want to believe.

Meanwhile the head accountant of the company asked me if I’d take over while the head of accounts payable takes the month of may off for a vacation. They flattered me and said they really think I could do it, even when I reminded them of my limited experience. They said I see big picture when the other accounts payable people within the org don’t, that they see I can work hard, and can learn quickly. But again, they’ve known me less than a month, seen me in person less than two weeks, and are clearly finding little success searching for a temp so I don’t know if I trust them. And I definitely know I don’t want to work in their finance department long term since not one of them seems happy. They also do not understand that I still have things to do other than accounts payable and invoicing, and that they’re asking me to take on an additional full time job while I still have easily 20 hours hour per week of TruClinic things to finalize and transfer. To them, I’ll be bored come May, little do they know I’ll still have plenty of “old company” things to tie up.

I have too many options. I could bail on everything, go back to Utah and apply for any other job. Rent is low, I’d find something, maybe something that makes me way happier than any of this ever could. I could move to New Zealand, be a hippie for the few years I have left when it isn’t creepy. I could write a book or make a film, do things I’ve always need to do but never had the guts for. Or I could put my hands up here and just do what I’m told; there is always work to be done, and people will obviously hand it to me if I passively let them. Or, I could fight. I could put myself out there and keep placing myself in meetings and talking loudly like I know the answers. Tell people I should be involved, should be told what is happening, should be listened to when I speak. Lately it seems like I often do know the answers, and the more I’m here the more I realize I’m just as worthy of making decisions as they are. It feels like I’d be wasting an opportunity if I bow out now. I’ve had people come up to me after meetings this week and shake my hand and say “Wow, I didn’t know you existed!” and “what do you do again?” “you’re here for how long?” and “what do you think about this?”

Part of me hates having to tell people what I do, who I am, what I’m good at, but the rest of me knows I have to if I want to take advantage of this chance. And I want to take this chance. I want to have a career I’m excited about, work at a place where I make things happen, be involved in more than just daily, keep my head down activities. And I really believe this company, this place, could use me.

But.

As I type this I realize what I’m so confused and scared of, isn’t that I won’t succeed. It is that I’ll fight and put in all this effort to become part of a company that I’ll be proud of and successful in and grateful for and I won’t be in Utah.

I haven’t known this until today. I had to make this choice 6 years ago when I left Seattle, Seattle or Utah and Utah won. It wasn’t about scenery or friends, jobs or cost of living. It was about my parents and how crazy lucky I am to have them and how I don’t want miss out on these good years. So many of the people I meet have negative/neutral relationships with their parents, or tell me stories about coming back years later to take care of them in their old age. All I hear is that they missed out on the good years, that they never got to have what I do. That they didn’t get to see or share in people who lead by example and support unconditionally, get to have their brother be their best friend and grow up with him blocks away. So here I am again, having put off making the next choice, “is Utah THE place for me?” for years, feeling unsure about committing to a place I don’t love everything about. But sitting here in beautiful California, trying to force my way into a company and career that I thought was the most important thing, and I know now that Utah wins again, because of them. Because I don’t want to call them every week to check in.

So here is where I am:

I like saying yes to things. I like temporary challenges. I can stay in CA for some of April and May and even June and help out with accounts payable or look into some brand new job that some random guys think I can do, but whatever happens I now I know I can tell them that come June, July, August.. I’m going to be based in Utah. I’m happy to come out to CA every month or two to check in, or to spend some time now learning what we spend money on or how things work, but that come fall, my home is Utah. And if that works for them, great. But if it doesn’t, then count me out because in 2018, 2019, 2020.. Utah is my priority.

My brother lives 5 minutes away, is 25 and dating a girl he’s really into, who knows how many years I have left before his new family takes over? My parents are turning 60, 65 and still living that adult, powerful, self sufficient, inspiring, life that I’m so proud of, soon that becomes something we all mourn for, and I have to watch as they let it go. And I, I’m still in a place where I can do whatever I want, whenever I want, and I want to spend my vacations and adventures and reckless times saying yes to absurdities, not visiting them, and feeling guilty for choosing youth over choosing them.

I want Utah to be my home base, the place I spend in my inbetween. And while who knows where I’ll be in 5 or ten or 20 years, I know that right now my family is there, together, in a single unit that I know won’t last, but I sure as hell am not going to be the one to break it up.