And I couldn’t be happier.
Today I celebrate the one year anniversary of my new job at the University of Pennsylvania. I have worked for Apple, Western Digital, and Keyence all leading up to this job but it wasn’t easy.
After leaving Apple my career path slowly turned toward outside sales. I was really good at it, but after being laid off by Western Digital (not for performance reasons) and moving to Keyence my territory was much larger than what I was used to. This meant spending 5 days a week (at least) on the road and away from home.
I knew when I took the job that it was going to be a lot of traveling but I didn’t realize how much it would impact my personal life. It was difficult to maintain friendships, get involved in my local community, and have any type of routine. All things that are important to me.
When I got the call that I was being offered the job at the University of Pennsylvania it was a very difficult decision. The offer was much lower than what I was making in outside sales but the the job would allow me to take back all of those things I was missing by being away so much. Plus I could go back to school. What made the decision more difficult was being away from all my friends and family since I was training out in Chicago for 8 weeks. My gut told me it was the right move.
Accepting the position was one thing, telling my current employer who just spend thousands of dollars training me and flying me around the country I was leaving was another. Fortunately Keyence took the news very well and sent me on my way back home.
I will never forget the feeling after landing back in Philadelphia with my new career on the horizon. It was a really warm sunny day (which is rare this time of year) and coming from freezing cold and cloudy Chicago, it was just the validation I needed that I made the right choice.
I was completely pivoting away from sales and primarily focusing on technology at Penn. If you can’t tell from my website I’m way more interested in technology.
Here I am one year later excited to go into work (most days). This balance of work has allowed me to go back to school, adopt an amazing dog, start a relationship, work other jobs that I find interesting, build a website, and rediscover my passion of photography. Sure some of those may have happened either way but I’m certain that decision helped.
We shouldn’t need to be reminded that life is short and money isn’t everything. Make sure you enjoy what you do. If you don’t love your job that’s okay too as long as it allows you to do the things you love to do.
This has been on of the most entertaining years of my life and I can’t wait to see where the next year takes me.