The Honeymoon is Over

Things have changed drastically since my old boss quit and moved on to greener pastures, and I can't decide if I'm happy about it or not.

On paper everything sounds great. I had a sit down talk with my new boss, who I have heard horror stories about but has been nothing but kind to me, and she pretty much told me that she didn't need an assistant nor did she want one in the future. Which is when I began to panic because in addition to helping with special projects and running the events, I was an assistant to my old boss and without being an assistant, it seemed like my job would be axed.

Turns out I was wrong. My new boss told me that instead of getting rid of me, they wanted to have me start training to be a Project Manager. Under this new title, I would be working on projects internally such as the launch of our new consumer website and I would still get to manage the events we have throughout the year.

While this sounds picture perfect (aka I get a semi-promotion, possibly more money, a better title, etc.), I still can't help feeling a little weary about the whole thing. True, it's a great opportunity, but a little bit of me inside keeps saying, "Is this really what you want to do with your life?"

With events, it's like I've finally found something besides writing that I enjoy and am good at. And now with all this extra work I'm going to be doing managing projects and slotting emails and making collateral, I won't have nearly as much time to focus on what I really like about my job. I made this clear to my new boss - that events is what I love - and she responded that she had no intention of taking them away. I just worry about her expectations down the line and if this statement will remain true. These other projects will obviously take precedence over events because they need to get done.

I suppose what I'm really worrying about is not being happy anymore. For the past seven months, I've been really happy doing my job. I have liked planning the events, scouting locations, and picking themes. I really enjoyed working with my old boss. Things were going really well and then this little kink happened.

I'm worried that I'm going to start resent work - that I won't want to wake up in the mornings and that I'll start hating coming to work which is what started to happen to me in New York and I started to lose all motivation.

I guess what I'm starting to realize is that the honeymoon phase of liking my job in Chicago is coming to an end. I know I could start looking for a new job, but I haven't even been here a year yet, and I would really like to be able to have more events under my belt before I leave.

So the conclusion I've come to is that I'm going to try and stick it out until February when our largest event is, and in the meantime I have polished up my resume and if I ever start to feel like my job is moving in the wrong direction or events get taken away from me, then I can start looking around.

But until then, I'm going to see where this road takes me.