lassie

Before I begin:

Oh the joy, the celebration...Oh the wine that floweth, the shortbread cookies that disappeareth. High is the level of joy at this household on the occasion that youth league baseball games are cancelled. The rain, it falls. The hot chocolate, it heats up. The Pokemon cartoons, they blareth forth from the TV. I am faced with an ENTIRE EVENING with no plans. I am already in my PJs with a glass of red wine and listening to itunes in front of a blog-entry-in-progress, and I think I may cry from pure joy.

Change.
The bane of my existance, the definition of my existance and all existance. Sigh.

Mom and Dad still laugh at me over the fact that when I was little, I would cry when an episode of Lassie would end. I couldn't help it. Lassie was such a nice dog (wasn't she?) and I wanted to live in her happy world. There were always had happy endings, and it would upset me to no end that her world was gone, no matter how fictional or temporary it all was. The phrase "Lassie is going off the air" became synomonous with "change" in my family.

Well. Lassie is going off the air. Again.
Dammit.
Please excuse the following egocentric whining, but I'm sad about the whole Lassie thing. Again.

I've spoken several times of WONDERBOY, my team leader at work, and how amazingly happy I am at my job and my little research team there. I work with two other guys who are very very smart and very funny people. We enjoy banter, we enjoy research, we share curiosity, we share life-stories, we all three went to Ga Tech. It reminds me of grad school in a way - that excitement about SCIENCE and the debates that start with science and end up at all ends of the philosophical spectrum. We all have children approximately the same ages and patiently listen to and laugh at each others' children stories and go to events featuring each others' children. We work, we enjoy work, we work, we enjoy each other. For the last 4 years, I've been at that place in my career that I have always imagined as perfection. I love going to work. I walk into my office and spontaneously smile and joke with the guys. I am excited. The three of us debate and get LOUD with each other and always understand that it is science and not personal. We get off on science. We disagree. We highly respect each other. We are clearly all out here for the science more than for ourselves. We write awesome papers. We are what I think is a very powerful team. One of us, WONDERBOY, is clearly the team leader, while the other two of us are very good at being team members. We're not necessarily followers, but with a little big-picture guidance, we take it and run. WONDERBOY has the big picture and keeps us on the right path. It's the best work situation I could have ever imagined.

The problem with being a WONDERBOY, however, is that the power-suckers from above inevitably recognize that and suck you into their world, because they enjoy intelligent and capable people as much as I do. But they've got a lot more to offer intelligent and capable people than I do. WONDERBOY is being sucked into the world of NASA Headquarters in D.C. He'll be doing a part-time detail up there as a program manager for the next couple of years, which means that several changes are forthcoming. (1) He can no longer work on the research projects with me and gao because he will be the funder and we'll be the fundees. (2) He will be in DC three days a week and back here with us 2 days a week, one of which I am not at the office. (3) he is moving to a private office because he will be having many phone calls of a private nature in his new position.

Well Crap.

I am happy for him that he is recognized for being such a WONDERBOY, and have never had doubts he will be our division chief and probably more one day. But the selfish part of me feels rather like the evil ones are stealing him away from me and gao. The two of us left are rather like a couple of baby sparrows that have suddenly found out they have been shoved out of the protected nest into the real world and papa sparrow has abandoned us. Sniff.

I'm so sad. I'll miss WONDERBOY's sarcastic and dry wit. I'll miss how nice he is - he loaned my son one of his clarinets for a month when the company I was dealing with flaked out on me and didn't send Q his clarinet when they promised. I'll miss his straightforward way of looking at science and I'll even miss that he's right 99.9% of the time. Gao and I will have lots of adjustments to make. I love gao and he loves not only me but also my husband who was his roommate at Ga Tech as a grad student and taught him what baseball was all about. (This was all before I even knew my sweet DH). I'm ecstatic to still be working with gao. But we will be missing our inspiration without WONDERBOY. :-(
What in the world are we going to do?

Dammit again.

Well I can rest assured that one day I'll be in good with my division chief or center director or whatever...right? :-) :-( I'd really rather things stay exactly like they have been.

But the tears that flow when Lassie goes off the air have a way of cleaning off the slate so the next episode is ready to go. Whether I like it or not, change is not really the bane of my existance, but is the definition of it. Dammit. :-)

For anyone who thinks I don't "get" change, even at my advanced age, I retaliate with my favorite song "We Said Hello Goodbye" by Phil Collins. If you want to know who I am, then take a listen to that. It's been my theme song since since the very first time I heard it, which was when I was making the decision whether to move to the east coast or return to Texas after I got my Master's degree. So despite the fact that I cry when Lassie goes off the air, I know it's all for the good. Life marches on. But it's ok to feel a little bit sad about it.