When a relationship first starts out, everything is bright and shiny. You spend your days in a euphoric glee that rivals the actress in anti-depressant commercials. Your friends get sick of hearing about your new beau, but you can't seem to talk about anything else. You're excited, happy. There's so much possibility ahead of you. Before you know it, you're planning the wedding and naming your kids (secretly, of course). You notice he has a few bad habits, but you chalk them up to personality quirks. No one can be perfect, right? Your friends raise their eyebrows and question you about it, but you defend your lover vehemently. You tell friends that you find these flaws endearing, that it doesn't bother you, or that it could be worse. You even talk yourself into believing your own line of bullshit. For the first month, everything is spectacular. The way you look at him, he can do no wrong. Entering the second month, you're well into a routine. Things are comfortable, you're settled into a routine. You don't sneak off to the bathroom before he wakes up in the morning to brush your teeth because you're so worried about your morning breath. You don't spend an hour fixing your hair and your makeup every night to look perfect for him. The stress is off of you, so you start to notice those "personality quirks" even more, and they are bugging you. You try to talk to him about it, but he snaps back at you, saying that you spend too much time on that goddamn computer playing WoW. Look, asshole, I'm trying to save money by not going out, and I need to get more honor so I can get those epic bracers, so fuck off. Yeah, that's right, leave. At least I've got chicken.
I think of a job as being much like a relationship. At first, things look great. You're excited about working for a new company, and it shows. You wear their tshirts everywhere. You gotta repruhzent! You're proud of where you work. But much like a relationship, after the first month mark, the new job shine has worn off, and it's back to routine. You notice a few bad things here and there, and you stop telling all your friends that they have to come work there. The honeymoon is over, folks.
Today marks my 74th day working for Yahoo!, and I'm just as excited about working here as I was the day I got told I had the job. Every morning when I take the shuttle to work, I smile when we get to campus and I see all the buildings with the big Yahoo! sign on them. I'm happy - no, more than that. I'm content, which as everyone knows, is very rare for me. I still tell all my friends they should come work here (hey, my team is hiring!), and due to my unflagging enthusiasm, they are starting to think this isn't just another fling. I apologize for my lack of updates to this blog lately, but perhaps this explains why.
I've also been back in Atlanta to see Nathan. The day after I left, a good, good friend - Paul Scigliano - died. My best wishes go out to his family in this time. Paul was a good person. When everything went wrong in Atlanta, he was the person that helped me. He gave me the strength to keep going, and he will be missed.
