Big Decisions

I'm in the mist of a big decision so I thought that I would write about it and get everyone involved with the details.

A little history...Cerner decided to create a policy sometime earlier this year that those people who work remotely and do not travel will have the opportunity to move to Kansas City, find a position with travel, or find another position outside of Cerner by December 31, 2007. I don't know all of the motivation behind these decisions, but I am not bitter about it. Cerner has given me the opportunity to work for another year that I didn't expect at all - especially under my terms. I take it as a business decision and the leaders of Cerner have grown a company pretty well in the last 14 years I have been there. What will work out, will work out and I need to trust God for my stability and not trust in Cerner. (This was a huge thing for me last year when I initially resigned.) I also know that working remotely with a group of people that mostly work together in person is a challenge. The work dynamic is different if everyone is remote than just with a few people remote when the rest of the team has the opportunity to work together face to face. There were getting to be quite a few of us around and I can see why a policy was created, it is just yucky at the individual level to have to follow the corporate policy.

My immediate manager and her manager are working to try and find a position for me. I am honored that they feel I provide value and they want to keep me around. Adding some travel to our routine does not bother me because I miss that part of my job. I'm not willing to be gone every week, but once a month or even twice a month would be a nice variety and a chance to interact with some clients in person. I really do miss interacting with clients!

Last week an opportunity was presented for me that if I were to take on the challenge, I would be spared the end of the year deadline and be able to be employed beyond the end of the year. There is a huge BUT in the clause though - they want more hours. Specifically the request is four full days a week which is twice as much as I am doing now. The opportunity is very interesting - a mix of working with clients and writing requirements and guiding people through writing reports for our clients. I would get to use some new technologies that I would have the opportunity to learn as well to make it even more interesting. I would have the chance to lead a new initiative that has quite a bit of exposure so there would definitely be some excitement and notoriety in it.

I just don't see working four days a week as a good decision for our family. I really think that it's best for Andrew to be home schooled this year and that wouldn't really be fair to him if I worked four days a week and tried to fit school in around the schedule. We've already started and we've set that expectation with him and I don't think that it would be appropriate to change for this opportunity because I don't have to take it. I am willing to work some more hours but I don't know exactly what that is yet. That's where my big decision comes in...am I willing to take on more days or more hours where I am pretty much half and half of work and stay home or working every day but maybe not all day? Then adding school onto that, there isn't too much chill time or time to do laundry, make dinner, run errands and do all of those other household things that need to get done.

Adding more hours also means figuring out more child care for the boys - we still didn't have it all figured out for the fall semester yet anyway. If I were to add more hours, I think that I would want to find somewhere for them to go for one the entire days to be something more structured and not just someone "watching" them while they figured out how to find something to play while waiting for a parent. I would like the boys to spend one afternoon with their dad and hopefully that would be the science experiment time too so there was some structure there and something that I don't have to do for school.

Financially it would definitely be easier if I continued to work for Cerner after December 31st. One of us would have to do some more work between now and when Todd finishes his degree to not go into debt. The more that Todd works, the more time we don't get to see him so I'm not terribly keen on him taking on a job as well as school. And if I'm home all of the time, the days and weeks would probably get really long without him. We don't know how much study time he will need with multiple classes - we'll start to see that in a month! We both expect that it will take quite a bit of study time - everything has so far for sure!

So if anyone has any great words of wisdom, please let me know! Next week, I need to declare the number of hours that I am willing to work. Based upon that, my managers will decide what position they are willing to offer based on the hours that I will be willing to work and how that fits into my current responsibilities. Thanks for listening!