I’m sure most of you have noticed the incessant yet vague hints about potential new things over the last several months in this space. Well, now is the time for the veil of vagueness to be (kind of) lifted.

I officially started a new job this week. I’m doing roughly the same thing (federal contracting systems support and development), though I’m doing it at a different agency, which is (and this is the good part) only about fifteen minutes’ drive from my house. As of Monday, I no longer have to deal with the gruelling 200 mile round trip commute to Northern Virginia.

I’ve had this thing sort of on the hook since late July, if you count the feelers sent out to professional contacts about the position (a slot in a new division, which was actually modeled on the group I was working for). Those feelers led to other feelers being sent back the other way – at a certain point in this business, everybody knows somebody who knows everyone else, which led to what is quite possibly the best interview anyone’s ever given anywhere – seriously, this was one of those mythical interviews where, a few days out, I wasn’t second-guessing a single response I gave. That led to an offer, and paperwork, and several weeks of human resources professionals and supervisors from two different organizations negotiating over my services.

I’ve spent the last month or so detailing and documenting all the processes for the stuff I did at the old place, and training my replacements; my departure left the office short-handed (though I found out today that they are able to hire behind me and several other lingering vacancies – the solicitations are on the street as I type this), so I felt a little bit bad about leaving, but my goal was to do my best to leave the place in a better state than I found it, and I think I did.

The old place was sad to see me go – they all understood the reasoning (I had no work-life balance, because really, I had no life), and wished me well. They gave me a nice send-off gathering, and said lots of nice things about me.

The whole business is a bit of an ego boost, really.

The first couple of days at the new job have been positive so far; The team is small, and made up of people I’ve either worked with in the past, or have worked with folks I know (this agency moved their headquarters south from DC a few years ago, and filled out a lot of the staff with folks I worked with at the old agency’s Richmond site), so it’s comfortable already – it feels kind of like coming home, even though I’ve never worked here before.

I’m starting to get a handle on the new kinds of projects I’ll be working – this agency does some different kinds of things, so it’ll involve some different kinds of systems, and a fundamentally different way of looking at things, but it’s all related, so I’m figuring it out. At this point, it’s been a lot of training and reading and hand-shaking, though I’ve got meetings on the calendar lined up – I’m looking forward to jumping in and being useful. I seem to have a reputation for being highly-skilled and valuable in this particular community, and I really want to live up to the hype, despite my regular bouts with impostor syndrome.

So…yeah. I think it’s going to be good.