I don't know that I've ever been happy to be called an unresolved piece of dirt,  but today I was.

I talked to of the individuals who was closely involved with my potential Abu Dhabi job today.  He's been someone who I fear I had disappointed a great deal when I turned down the position in the middle east,  and I've been kind of avoiding him for the last several months.  Today I saw him,  and he stopped to talk to me,  and greeting my saying, "well here's an unresolved piece of dirt."  I too have been feeling that I've had an unresolved status with him,  and this has been particularly on my mind because of me moving to a new position at Amazon. 

But it turns out that the organization in Abu Dhabi that I was looking to move to has not been doing well the last 6 months.  There has been some infighting,  and the relationships that organization has with it's American counterpart have not been respected,  mainly by the American counterpart. 

While talking to this individual today he said that I made the right decision,  and that I should be glad I didn't agree to move there.

While I admit to still occasionally having regrets about turning down that position,  what I heard today made me feel a bit better.

The last thing this individual said to me was that the bullet that is Rafe Cookinghamus is being saved for another shot.  :)

-Rafe

Tags: abu dhabi, job search
Current Location: Home
Current Music: Orff - Carmina Burana - In Taberna; Estuans Interius

Hello, and welcome back.

About a month and a half ago, I initiated a conversation with a faculty member of the university that I work at. He had recently returned from the Middle East where he was assisting in setting up the initial licensing and accreditation for a new university. Having myself just finished grad school in Information Systems Management a few months previous, I was interested in having a conversation about the UAE, which I had spent some time learning about. He agreed to meet for lunch, and over the course of the next hour, he spent some time talking to me about his experiences in Abu Dhabi. At the end of the hour, he said to me, "I have a job for you." At the time I thought he was referring to some work that he wanted me to do on the software that I'm responsible for maintaining, but instead he was talking about an opportunity to go do IT work at this new school.

I indicated that was tentatively interested, and emailed him my resume. He sent it off to Abu Dhabi, where it was seen by the CEO of this new school. The CEO looked at it, decided I was amazing, that the school must have me, and put together an offer for employment. He emailed the offer back to the professor, who forwarded it on to me.

The next day was a Saturday, and is my habit on Saturdays, I don't go in to work. I do however check my email as the first thing I do when I get up, Saturdays or no. Keep in mind now that I knew nothing about this school, or the need for IT personnel the day before, and now on Saturday morning, bleary eyed, I open my email, and find a job offer for 25% more than what I currently make, in a country 12 time zones away, working for people I've never met, and doing work that is a significant increase in responsibilities from what I currently am employed to do.

I quickly emailed the professor asking for more information, and slowly over the course of the next several days, I started to get some. I began communicating directly with the CEO, and learned a bit more about the position.

The school had 90 students, none of which were in a full time undergraduate program. Instead they were certificate courses, which meant that the school was quite small. The position was for the director of IT, although that title was never used during any of my communication with either the professor or the CEO. As I continued to gather information, I was told that it would be likely that they would want to fly me to Abu Dhabi to visit the school, interview with people, and in general learn as much as I could to assist in making a decision.

Before long exactly that invitation was sent, and I decided to accept.

Prior to visiting Abu Dhabi, I was leaning very heavily away from accepting the position. I knew too little about it, the school seemed disorganized, and it simply felt like too much chaos. During my visit though, I began to have a wonderful time. My sole responsibilities were to talk to people over the course of 3 days (the fourth was free, allowing me a day to get to Dubai and get a quick tour of the city). I had been told before I left that the key to doing business in the Middle East is to remain flexible. It was easy, and quite enjoyable to remain flexible while there, because I had no real responsibilities. At one point someone else was interviewing for a marketing position at the school, but as her resume was clearly an IT resume, I was asked to help out at the last minute in assisting in an interview with her. Remaining flexible on this allowed me to be in an unusual, but interesting position. While being interviewed, I'm interviewing someone else. I enjoyed myself a great deal.

I then returned to my home in Seattle, having negotiated a week in which to make a decision. I erred in this a bit, as Thanksgiving was during this time, and I didn't have as much free time as I would have liked to make the decision. It's unlikely it would have mattered however, and at the end of the week I hadn't been able to make the decision, and asked for two more days.

At the end of two days I was truly no closer to having made a decision than I was when I was still in Abu Dhabi. There was very little time that I was awake during that week and two days that I was not thinking about the decision in one way or another. For each reason to go, there seemed to be an equally good reason to stay. When I was tired, I felt it would be best to stay in Seattle, when I was awake and alert, I felt it best to go to Abu Dhabi.

Because I had an extremely difficult time making the decision, I used methods that I don't normally use. I drew up a list of pros and cons for both going and staying. I assigned point values to each of them, totaled them up, and they came out 24 to 26, a far to narrow a margin for the decision tool to be useful. I also wrote pages of text trying to speculate what my life would be like if I went, and if I stayed. These speculations included practical matters, approaches to work life, and approaches to my personal life. I had hoped that in doing so, it would become clear to me which path I would like my life to follow next. Instead they only helped further the internal conflict.

Finally, in the last two days before making the final decision, I felt pretty okay about going, and had planned on making that happen. It was about an hour before I would have sent the "I'm accepting" email when a close friend of mine called me and said that I shouldn't take the job. She said that it was okay to be excited and nervous about the prospect of something new and interesting, but only if I was genuinely excited about that new something. Her argument was convincing, in no small part due to the fact that I didn't feel particularly strongly about going to Abu Dhabi. One thing that I did learn from all of my trying to figure out what I should do was that neither option seemed like the one that I genuinely was excited about or truly wanted.

I sent the email; I declined the job offer.

I then laid down and bawled my eyes out, something that I haven't done for many many years.

The next week I felt deeply miserable. I felt like I had given up a tremendous opportunity to be a part of the initial shaping of a brand new school. The school had all sorts of things going for it. The Abu Dhabi royal family was strongly behind the school, supporting it in all sorts of ways, including giving it money, and promising several thousand students over the course of the next year. The school was growing extremely rapidly, they needed someone who understood IT systems in a higher education environment, and I, despite my self-doubt, would have fit that job pretty much perfectly. I felt that turning down the offer was the worst mistake of my life.

By the end of that week I began to think of a plan to remedy that. All of the reasons for staying in Seattle had left my head, all I could think of was trying to fix what I had done. Thus, on Monday of last week, I sent a piece of email to Abu Dhabi asking for a second chance. Afterward, I felt better than I had for the last two weeks. I felt calm and comfortable, and I awaited an answer.

An answer came on Friday.

By that time however, life had returned to normal. I no longer felt depressed about the idea of staying in Seattle in my current job, and I had begun once again to feel settled. When the answer came, I no longer wanted to go to Abu Dhabi. The answer was, of course, that they would be happy to reconsider me.

For one last time my emotions were thrown into complete disarray. I was now mildly panicking that I would have to go. I didn't wait long, I sent them back one last piece of email apologizing, and withdrawing myself from consideration.

And then I felt bad, but not as bad as I did when I first wrote them and said I wouldn't accept the offer. I also felt good, I felt good that I was going to be able to stay in Seattle and continue living my life, but I didn't feel as good as I had when I wrote them asking them for a second chance.

A few days have now passed, and I think that the whole thing is behind me. I'm left somewhat emptier from the experience, and I'm trying to think about it carefully and clearly as I can to figure out what I can learn from it, although one of my friends tells me that it's far to early, that I need some additional time before I can reflect on it. Nonetheless, I have a few observations.

Waffling back and forth on this decision has made me seem like a flake to many people. I don't think of myself in this way, I consider it very important to be a man of my word, and when I agree to do something or not do something, I regard it as a matter of personal integrity to do what I say I will. I don't at all feel good about myself from this experience, and I hope to never have to do something like this again, I feel like I've disappointed people, and this is not something which makes me feel happy.

I don't know how I could have done anything differently and had this entire ordeal turn out in any other way than what it did. At each juncture I thought I was doing the right thing. The intensity of the swings of emotion that this episode has brought about have caught my completely by surprise. Perhaps if I had never accepted the trip to Abu Dhabi, and simply turned down the offer early on none of this would have happened, but I do believe that I was able to keep an open mind while there, and I'm glad that I went.

Perhaps one thing might have helped, something I didn't have before I went, and still do not have, and that's a clear idea of what I want to do next in life. Choosing to attend grad school was a clear intention - I knew what I wanted. And even during the times that it was difficult to stick with it, I continued to believe that it what I wanted, and I finished and got my degree. I have absolutely no idea what I want to do next. If I did, I would have had a clear set of criteria for evaluating the Abu Dhabi position, and it would have made the decision much easier.

One of my hopes for this online journal is to use it as a tool in which to explore what I want out of life. Comments are welcome. :)

That having been said, I'm deeply grateful for the support that my friends have given me during this time. One of the major reasons for electing to stay in Seattle was the depth and quality of my friendships here. I'm planning a "I'm staying in Seattle" party with them, this party replaces the farewell party I almost certainly would have thrown had I been leaving. I'm happy my friends will be able to be there.

So now I'm glad I'm staying in Seattle, glad that this mess is behind me, and I'm looking forward to new opportunities that will undoubtedly arise. Stay tuned.

Tags: abu dhabi, job search, seattle
Current Location: Seattle, at home
Current Mood: melancholy
Current Music: Philip Glass - Akhnaten