Apologies for the silence on the Cannon Chronicles – we have been doing a lot of soul searching and contemplating the future which would have made for abstruse and often depressing blog posts.  It’s funny that we started this blog four years ago to chronicle the move to a new stage of our lives.  And here I am doing a reboot for the blog as we prepare to do it all over again.

The last four years have been a real growth and learning experience for us.  We thought that “going back” to the part of the country where our family started and “going back” to the kinds of work we did then (Frank – turning wrenches, San – working with researchers) would be a breath of fresh air and just what we needed after the stress and agony that much of our lives in VA had become.  We didn’t realize how much we had grown and how hard “going back” to anything would be.  Frank realized that “just” fixing cars isn’t enough.  He basically ran his own shop at South County High School and was able to be a mentor and a leader.  What he found here was that it was much harder for him to do the work and lead the work in the way he wanted.  His particular place of employment provided particular challenges but every workplace has issues. I thought I was going to my dream job, working for a great boss and with people who valued my interesting blend of skills.  The great boss part is true but changes in senior management over the last year shed light on the mismatch between what the executives valued and what I had to offer.

So we had to make some choices.  Frank chose to take some time off and not work at all.  After the much needed road trip (chronicled on the travel blog)  He became a “house spouse” – spending time fixing up the 90 year old house that was beginning to lose it’s quirky charm.  After the previously mentioned flood, there was more contractor headaches, a bathroom that needed tiling, a newly build garage that needed customizing, etc. I also needed to make some choices and I chose to look for a new job.  This was an agonizing decision to make because I didn’t hate my job but I realized that while I loved what I was doing, I wasn’t doing what I loved.  So I decided to answer the phone when the next headhunter called.  And the odyssey began.

After a few whirlwind months of Skype interviews and flying hither and yon for in person conversations, I was in the enviable position of having choices.  I could stay in the comfortable central banking world where I had 20+ years of contacts and a good reputation.  I could move into teaching full time and enjoy the comfort of great colleagues and no relocation requirement. Or I could move out of my comfort zone and move into a new area where my expertise was very relevant but where my contacts were limited and the location involved moving (again). After much contemplation and lots of discussions¹, I picked the hardest path. Let me explain.

A dear friend once complained about hiking with me.  She insisted that when faced with a choice on the trail, I would always choose the route that went up.  It has become a standing joke in my family that mom always chooses to go up: up mountains, up towers, up whatever is there. (I’ve written about the challenges of “going up” while hiking in MO.) I like the challenge and the promise of birds eye view which you don’t get from the bottom of the mountain. So I applied that same reasoning here.  I could easily have stayed where I was and kept doing the things that I had been doing.  There was no drastic imperative to change but that felt like going around the mountain: familiar but tedious, without pain but without payoff.  Teaching full time would have required some climbing to really do it right but it felt more like a hill than a mountain.  I wanted to be happy climbing the hill.  I tried to figure out how to make that work.  But alas, when it comes down to it, I do really need to go UP.

So Frank gets to follow me up another hill.  This trail leads to Rochester, New York where I’ll start a new challenge in a new industry and new location: Chief Data Officer for the University of Rochester.  I’ll be the first person to hold this position so I’ll be climbing with a compass but no map.  (Have I tortured this metaphor long enough?) The position involves all the nerdy data stuff that I love but applied to running an academic institution rather than supporting monetary policy research.  I’m stupidly excited and scared to death at the same time.  And that’s how I know it’s the right thing for me.

Be prepared for more frequent posts as we figure out how to market and sell our “cozy Brookside bungalow oozing with charm and replete with upgrades” or whatever the real estate agent decides to use as a marketing quote. Then I hope to have lots of interesting stories to tell about this next leg of our adventure.  If nothing else, there are real mountains nearby that I can climb!

 

 

¹ For those who listened to all my angst and helped me walk through this difficult decision: ten thousand thanks.