Your Talents Are Being Wasted
I ran into a coworker at a game the other day, he had had a few but was generally lucid, and he took me aside and at one point said, “your talents are being wasted in your current position“. Not really sure how to respond I mentioned the new position with a different company I had been considering but he reacted strongly against that saying I should stay with the same company but move back into Operations.
It was certainly flattering to hear his high estimation of my abilities and yet at the same time mildly disconcerting to hear his frank evaluation of my current post. It was somewhat ironic as he had begun the conversation by thanking me profusely for the new jackets I managed to acquire for Ops.
So what if I’m not being pushed or challenged every day I work? There are days like that but many days that aren’t hard at all. Even my former boss admitted I usually gave 150% about 110% of the time in my former position. After 9 years of that, haven’t I earned something a little less draining? I still face challenges and put my creative problem solving to use, just not all the time.
My years in Ops were great but being underpaid and undervalued while fighting to keep your fingers in the dam to keep the pits of hell from overrunning your home isn’t anyone’s idea of ideal working conditions. Is a return to Ops in my future? Quite possibly. After all the day I left I set and made clear my conditions for returning. I wouldn’t call them demands exactly but whatever you call them, they haven’t been met yet.
So are my talents being wasted or am I just taking a higher-paid breather? There are battles yet to be fought in this new land, I see no reason to turn my back on it just yet.
