personal and professional

When you are a passionate person by nature, it can be hard to easily differentiate between personal and professional. I am professional, or strive to be, in the way I conduct myself on work time. But I also take my job very personally and put a lot of myself into my work. When things go wrong I can't always just walk away and brush it off. On the contrary, I am known to stew for quite some time more than is necessary. I think for me the personal side often overshadows the professional, sometimes good, sometimes bad. It means I will most likely never hold a stressful corporate job behind a desk in midtown, and that's just fine by me. Perhaps it's part of the reason my mom always tells me that I never would be good in the military. But two beers into a Friday evening I didn't start this to talk about me.

At a job you care about, one which you do well, you can't help but become close to some of the people you work with. And when it comes down to making a tough professional decision, the personal can obviously complicate things. A coworker got an amazing job and it sent a quiet but dazing shockwave through the place. We are a close bunch, bosses and coworkers alike, and the news was heavy. Amidst all the energy a joke that started professional turned personal and the vibe changed. All of a sudden unity was nowhere to be found. We peeled off in our different directions and went on about our lives. Will we all move on and realize professional decisions are just what they are? They are not intended to hurt, we know that. Yet they do. True friendship transcends as it always has, but how do you see that far when the tension in the room is so thick?

The truth is we never quite know where we are going next. But we have to do the best that we can for ourselves, and our friends would not disagree. Yet some times I guess that can hurt people. If I were in my friend's position, having gotten a killer job that was the right next step for me, I wonder what I would say, or more, how I would break the news. Either way it would suck. The potential for professional development. The potential to hurt a close friend.

"You ok? You're not hurt? You're not dead? Ok, good, get back to work."

on the turntable: Nick Drake, Bryter Layter