At the New Year, people usually reflect on the past year. I’ll follow that well-trodden road with an emphasis on my employment situation, because this year and next year are shaping up to look so different as to be unrecognizable to one another.

This year saw me reach a tipping point with my Client Service Administrator (CSA) job at Kaizen Financial Advisors, a job I haven’t mentioned much due to compliance and confidentiality concerns. Remember that spectacular sunrise picture I’ve posted more than once?

That morning, sitting quietly on the beach while a deer meandered by, I felt a strong sense that it was time to move on from serving as a CSA. Although I could complete the job tasks well enough, and I served my boss and our clients to the best of my ability, I never got excited about my work. I had the job not because I wanted to work in finance, but because four years ago, my boss offered a super-convenient work-from-home job that I thought would help me stay sane through all the diapers. And it has, so my thanks remain to the job for that.

Yet, this photo reminds me of that contemplative hour that, in some ways, led me eventually to my choices today. It’s when I started questioning our status quo, a tipping point.

Even though that’s when I started questioning whether I should stay at my job, I didn’t immediately give notice back then; I was too afraid of making big changes, and I felt loyal to the company and my boss. But in the intervening months, some personal things combined with a growing realization that I needed a change in my employment situation. I didn’t have any ideas what that might look like at the time, but by Thanksgiving, I knew something would have to change.

At the same time, back in September I went with Kaizen to a user group at Tamarac, a company whose software we’ve used for many years. Their software has dramatically improved in usability over the last couple years (and I’ve done more training, which helps), and using that software was a big part of my CSA job. During that user group, I arranged for us to get a tour of the company and meet our support team, some of whom we’ve worked with for years.

At that time, I found myself thinking how cool it would be to work in that environment. Their company culture seemed positive, and the people we met all seemed nice. I liked their vibe. I idly browsed their job listings, but didn’t see anything compelling — certainly nothing worth quitting my super-convenient work-from-home job in favor of a commute to the Columbia Center in downtown Seattle. But after that I occasionally would eyeball their local job listings to see if anything really compelling came up.

Meanwhile, I gave my notice at Kaizen, and had my last day yesterday, Friday, December 30. Earlier this week, I handed over all my home office supplies and my laptop, along with a big document describing how to do most of my tasks. It felt a little bit like graduating from college again — there’s no “homework” hanging over my head after four years! Hooray!

Last month, something really compelling at Tamarac did come up: a Technical Writer II position, the perfect blend of my previous writing experience and current financial experience. After some serious soul-searching and late-night conversations with Ian, we decided I should apply and see what happens.

What happened was that I got an interview last Friday, which (despite my still recovering from pneumonia) went swimmingly. I thought so, and apparently the hiring manager thought so, too, because he called last night with a job offer that had me bouncing with enthusiasm. I agreed without negotiation or hesitation. It will be at least two weeks before I can start, which is good, because that gives us some time to look into childcare options.

As those of you who know me well are aware, this is way, way, way outside my standard operating procedure. In our family, we act cautiously, with comprehensive planning ahead to cover every contingency, never making seriously big decisions quickly or without knowing as much as we can about how it would work out. But with this job, we don’t know what will happen for childcare and we don’t know about how my commute and being gone full-time would impact our daily life; but I do know this is a job I’m really, really excited about, for possibly the first time in my entire working career.

That, I will fight for. One, two free, here we go!