Oita: T minus 2 weeks

Originally I had planned to stay in the US until late January both so that I could keep working while TLG and the kids got established and also to wait out the dog’s quarantine. Lately, however, a number of things have sort of fallen into place that has dramatically changed my plan for the better.

The result (tl;dr) is that in two short weeks I leave for Japan to join my family.

To say I am happy with this turn of events would be a colossal understatement. I will still have to return in January to retrieve our canine family member, and conduct other business (visa), but that should only take a week or two and then I will be returning one way…

So what happened? Well, the main thing that happened is that my current employer is being totally supportive of our move (i.e. awesome). Before my initial announcement that I was moving to Japan, I didn’t know how they would react, and I was pretty anxious about it. Even though I am making this move pretty much for the happiness and continued sanity of my family, as well as trying to accomplish something different in both lifestyle and way of life; I really do actually like the people I work for, and I felt like by leaving the company I would be letting them down.

But when I told them, instead of being mad, they were actually really supportive. Since I told them I had to wait out the quarantine period and stay in the US they asked me to stay on until I had to leave in January. They even offered to pay for a trip to Japan to visit my family for a couple weeks while I stayed here to work. I was really impressed by their generosity.

Then something really bad, but also kind of good happened: The project I was working on suddenly got canceled. In a way this was good because we all knew that it was going to be a terribly difficult project, for a very difficult customer, on an impossible schedule.  Suddenly I was staring at my desk and I realized that my work load was reduced instantly by 70-80%. And it gave me an idea.

My company (which deals almost exclusively with Japanese customers), has an office in Tokyo. Over the last couple months since my announcement a common half-joke around the office has been that soon I would be opening our first Oita office. Well in all seriousness the idea of continuing employment in my current field full time has no appeal to me right now, BUT I would be happy to continue working on a part-time/contract employee basis and I told them so. That would allow me to keep my network and ties up and still allow me to transition to “this new thing” gradually. Very gradually.

Baby Steps.

That is exactly the sort of deal I will hopefully work out. So to that end I have a meeting set up with the manager of our Tokyo office and hopefully we work out a mutually beneficial deal. From the conversations we’ve had already I think we will. I will be either part-time or contract based, I’ll work primarily from home in Oita (basically telecommuting), with occasional travel as needed, which is perfect.

AND, best of all I leave in two weeks for the meeting and then off to Oita to start my new life and “new” job.

Like my Dad always said… “Motion breeds luck.” If you know what you really want, move toward it and luck will find you along the way.