Carla suggested it would be a good idea to write down the reasoning behind my decision to about-face and work for DiamondBack full-time forever.

In brief: Working for West Arête a little bit enabled me to see that I’ve been the victim of a bad case of grass-is-greener syndrome for years. I’ve decided to go back to working full-time for DiamondBack, with no plans to seek alternative employment in the foreseeable future.

Less brief: God, You helped me dispel the myth of the golden-haired woman in my own life sometime in between when I broke things off with Val and when I started dating Carla. But we never applied the same metaphor to my career: I’ve been believing the myth of the golden-haired job probably since my time at Teen Mania. (What Color Is Your Parachute? probably didn’t help.)

“Everything about working for DiamondBack is great, except for the fact that it’s truck bed covers.” I’ve been saying that for two years now. I ignored the first clause, however, and concentrated entirely on the second. Why? Because I believed that there was such a thing as the perfect, soul-satisfying job right out of the box somewhere. If I picked a job that employed the transferable skills I most enjoyed in a field that excited me, I’d be set. I would have made a perfect choice. I’d be right and happy.

I was convinced that working for DiamondBack would predetermine that I suffer a bad midlife crisis in twenty years, so in typical overcommunicative fashion I overplayed the value of several positives of working for West Arête:

• Doing more web development
• Learning new skills
• Working downtown (i.e., access to cultural events, connections to new people, feeling cool)
• Riding my bike to work
• Working with local people for local people
• No vacation days but unlimited freedom to take off as needed
• Better health coverage
• Cultural fit (i.e., environmentalism, priority on work-life balance, bicycles, local business)

And I underplayed many of the positives of working for DiamondBack:

• Presenting the right balance of mastery and challenge
• Working from home:
  • enjoyment of kids,
  • enjoyment of Carla,
  • leisurely pace,
  • no clothes overhead,
  • autonomy,
  • freedom to break for prayer or whatever
• Plenty of allotted vacation days
• Working for Ethan & Brandon
• Working with people I’ve grown to love
• Cultural fit (i.e., Christianity, priority on work-life balance)
• Much higher salary
• Freedom to move to Quebec
• Being a known quantity I’ve already taken fully into account in shaping my life and therefore not having to think about it at all

Looking at the lists above and now having a lucid idea of who I am, it’s obvious which job is the better fit.

The crucial missing ingredient in my career at DiamondBack wasn’t money, local connections, or even the opportunity to do web development. It was commitment. Had I been devoted to my job at DiamondBack, I would’ve said to Brandon last spring, “No, I’m sorry, I can’t accept you taking development completely out of my hands. But I love DiamondBack. So can we please find a way to make this work?”

“I love watching your heart and your head duke it out,” said Barb at church on Sunday when I brought this up, sometimes in tears. Deciding to return to DiamondBack feels different from deciding to depart for West Arête. I sure hope I can discern the difference between my heart and my head next time anything like this comes up again.