Ambition

As most of you know by now, I have taken a new job. As a person who has a history of working at jobs for a long time, you can imagine the amount of interest this new position must have had for me in order for me to make the change.

The job that I am taking on is not particularly different than the one that I had before. The level of seriousness that I am taking with it is very different. I did not take this on to fail.

And that is the problem.

Because of the excitement that I feel about the possibilities for this new spot; I find myself having to constantly reign in my ambition and excitement. It seems as though I find myself trying to do too much too fast. I can see all of the problems clearly. I can see the potential for improvement very clearly. And of course I arrogantly think that I can fix all of it.

What I fail to sometimes remember is that the group of people that I work with have been together for a long time. The things that I would like to see done differently have been done this way for a long time. I have only been involved for a couple weeks.

I know that I dont have enough background knowledge about where I am, who I work with, and the process that made the place the way it is to make an educated guess about what really should be different.

BUT I feel as though there are things that I would like to see different.

Thus the paradox.

It seems as though everybody in my personal life is telling me to wait. Dont do that yet. Hold your horses. Slow down.

And my new boss is telling me to go for it. Make it better. You can do it. That is your call to make.

Oddly, I have a better relationship with my new boss than I ever had with the old one. Yesterday he asked how I liked the job, and then suggested that we hold a noon-time cookout in honor of me joining the team. This is going great.

But it could go sooooo much better. There is so much opportunity for this place. There are so many things that are good, but could be great. And you all know how much I hate to wait.

This has been a huge ego boost. I have gone from feeling very meaningless to feeling very powerful. I have gone from having limited access to things to determining who has access to what things. And all of this has perhaps made me feel rather important. Which I can now see that I am not very important at all.

So, tonight, I wrote myself a note. Its a little post-it, and it will hang on my monitor starting tomorrow morning. it says

"not yet. wait a little longer. be patient. be sure you understand first. Listen the team you are just a small part of."

So I will bide my time. I will continue to act as a resource to these people. A helper. I wont try to be in charge, rather, I will ask questions, I will ask advice. I will ask how it has been done before. and I will remember that compared to these people; I dont know anything about anything. Maybe that noon-time cookout should be in honor of how long the others have been on the team.

And maybe, just maybe, I can make a dent in the place.