sea change

[Originally posted on January 24, 2020, at 8:00 p.m.]

The good news from my ex-boss is that I'll be working with him again, possibly as soon as next week. While this means that I'll once again have to go through the stress of moving from one office building to another, that's not a huge inconvenience when seen from the big-picture perspective. The boss says he'll be sending guys over to help with the move, so I guess I have little to do but pack up.

I'm delighted that this is finally happening; I feel as if I've spent the past year just biding my time, waiting for the chance to jump ship and get back to doing more interesting work. Not that anything I do at this job is all that interesting, mind you: I feel no particular loyalty to my company, and the work is, frankly, boring compared to teaching. At the same time, I'll be glad to get away from toxic personalities like Trish (talked about here and, more recently, here), ditzy personalities like Pooh Bear, and even well-intended but neurotic people like Spike.

We'll be our own little department, apparently, and directly under the supervision of the CEO.* I'm being taken back by the boss, and another ex-employee is coming back as well. Our mission will be to make a series of textbooks for use at our Vietnam branch. The boss envisions an entire curriculum spanning the years from elementary to high school. He also wants me to finish the Gravoca series we'd started: we had already created eight out of nine textbooks when we were suddenly told that the ninth textbook wasn't needed because, by that point, Korean high-schoolers would be shifting their focus to college-entrance exams. In Vietnam, though, a complete curriculum apparently makes sense, so Gravoca 3C, the final book in the nine-book series, is back on the table.

Working under my ex-boss again will mean more leniency when it comes to taking breaks, e.g., accumulating comp hours and using them to have a three-day weekend. Vacations will be less of a hassle to arrange, and I won't have to work on any more national holidays, like when we worked this past solar New Year's Day. Overall, I'd say life is looking up, or at the very least, it's looking better than it had been for a year and a half.

The boss also said that mandatory retirement isn't the issue we'd thought it was. He can continue to work past age 60 (one ancient staffer in our company, the CEO's older brother, already does this), and he hopes to be part of the Golden Goose for years to come. For myself, I'm probably going to work only until the end of my contract: I've had enough of all the dysfunctionality and skullduggery, the asinine politics and the rampant backstabbing. While it's true that no company is ever bullshit-free, I feel even more motivated to figure out a way to become an independent worker, i.e., my own boss. For now, though, it's enough to know life is improving. This change, coupled with the imminent zeroing-out of my debt, will make 2020 a banner year. Fingers and tentacles crossed.

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*Whether that's good or bad is yet to be determined. My ex-boss likes the idea because he won't have to answer to any of the other petty tyrants who manage other departments in our company. He considers himself buddy-buddy with the CEO, and he thinks that that coziness will shield him from the static of office politics, but I'm not so sure. After all, the CEO is the one who allowed my ex-boss to be ignobly put out to pasture for eighteen months, hung out to dry with nothing to do but sit quietly in his office napping and/or watching Netflix videos.