I believe everyone's lives have certain defining moments, and once these have passed, nothing is quite the same afterwards. I have come to one of those. For the first time in almost twelve years, my career has the potential to involve something beyond fixing the broken and replacing the obsolete. Instead, it will involve creating things which do not yet exist.
Creating... something I've done for fun for as long as I can remember. And now I'll be able to do it for money. This isn't confirmed yet — at this point it's merely an offer I've yet to accept. Right now I'm happy enough just to have the offer. Without revealing a lot of details, it involves doing things on the web (some of which will be fairly groundbreaking when they roll out), it's a substantial increase in pay, and it's somewhere besides where I'm working now. On one hand, it sounds like a no-brainer decision. My life doesn't work that way, though — never has, really.
So... caveats. It's a "temporary" position, which I've been told is merely a budgetary magic trick to establish a need and thus obtain a regular full-time position in the near future. One of the biggest gotchas for me there is a certain lack of benefits. Not a huge gotcha, mind you, since we can pick up insurance through Martha's workplace (even though it's fairly shitty). And, of course, there's the possibility that the full-time position will never emerge from the bureaucratic morass.
So even though it sounds like a great move, it's not entirely without risk. And this is the part where I get to decide if the risk is worth the potential reward. Hence the defining moment.
Katie had an interesting adventure today — indoor skydiving. It's something she's had her eye on for awhile, and today she did it. Her decision-making process was pretty straightforward, and it consisted of seeing something she wanted and going after it without looking back. I admire her courage in that. I watched her sitting on the bench in her jumpsuit and helmet with all the other skydivers, and her face was completely void of emotion... focused on the moment at hand, ready to face the results of her decision. After it was over, she called the experience "terrifyingly fun" and for her efforts got a certificate, memories, and two videos taken by yours truly.
I guess sometimes you just have to take that leap and see what happens.