My oh my, a month gone by. And what do I have to show for it? Surprisingly… a lot. Since my last little rant, I’ve invested a lot of time into more creative endeavors, and while little is visible above the surface, I’ve accomplished a lot: a dozen or so drawings, some wood carvings, a linocut or two, and too many preliminary sketches to count, all pointing to something…new. Spiritual developments, an adjective that makes truly everyone uncomfortable, abound, as does growth across almost all areas of my life and it’s both too much and desperately needed. Be careful what you ask for.

Maybe the biggest development, a new job, a major change at work. After a year laboring under one of the most aggressive, bellicose managers in my life, I suddenly find him terminated, swiftly and cleanly, his desk vacated in the first hour of work last Tuesday, and just as decisively I have filled his role. Everyone asks if I knew it was happening, everyone wants to know what I knew when, as if this was some sort of covert military coup. I knew it was happening 45 working minutes before it did. Was I “in” on it?? Well, the week prior I had spent all my free time putting together my portfolio in what I felt was a for-sure career change in the very near feature: indeed, I had several calls scheduled.

But god, how long has it been a problem that I needed to be addressed? For me it was 7 days into my position, 18 months ago, a very real Arrested Development “I’ve made a huge mistake” moment. 18 months of just dreading every meeting, every one-on-one, every review. A year and a half of everyone on our team sitting scattered across the office, anywhere but the desks in our team area.

So it’s a welcome change, but one that comes with a LOT of new challenges. This is the second time this has happened to me, where I am the proverbial greener grass on the other side of a grisly fence. Last time, I built my dream team and in a short year found myself walking away from them after a shit show of corporate machinations, turn over and broken promises. A year doing the job of the man I replaced, and never having his title or pay conferred to me. A year of treading water, trying to make head way but ultimately failing my team and myself. A dead spot on my resume with nothing to account for my time.

With any luck that experience prevents a replay here, but who knows? So many of us had a foot or two out the door, and that inertia is very difficult to reverse.

However, I’m excited, and I know the team is too, and hopefully that buoys us through the change.

At home, a routine finally manifests. My coffee rotation is a know commodity. Go Get Em Tiger knows my order, while Maru studiously does not: their faces a rehearsed tabula rasa with every regular who enters — they’ve never seen me in my life.

Nearly every day in Los Feliz begins gray and cool, just the way I like it, and by noon I’ve been forced to change into the shortest shorts, so often taking videocalls in a nice shirt and next to nothing below the waist, beads of sweat rolling down my back: the air conditioner is too loud to run while on call.

Last Friday, renewed with a sense of purpose after a team meeting and fully assuming the mantle of team manager, I got back from San Francisco and decided that the current set up of living room was not only all wrong, but actively preventing me from doing anything productive. I pulled everything into the kitchen, and rearranged the whole thing. The end result is 1,000,000% better, according to everyone who walks in: me, and John. The space feels activated, welcoming, and wide open. We love it.