jumping for joy

I am on the lovely train home, but tonight it mostly just feels long and dark—no view here after 10 pm. I’m returning from a seriously long day. I left on the first train of the morning, walking through the dark, starlit sky to the train station. Now I’m returning on the almost last train of the night, and will walk again in the starlit night home. The moon must be newish because it wasn’t out this morning and isn’t out now as far as I can tell on this train. That’s something I’d never have noticed in DC.

Today I did a day of presenting about the interface between leadership development and adult development for a group at the University of Auckland. Again and again, the group I was working with asked me about what I was doing here in New Zealand. “Do you have mostly governmental clients?” “Do you do much work in Auckland?” “Where are most of your clients based?” And I don’t have the heart to say that now, more than a year after I moved to this lovely place, I still don’t have many clients—certainly not enough to notice trends about anything. I am still just a very beginning consultant here, and I haven’t actually worked all that hard to get work. In fact, what have I been doing, anyway? When is the last time I had a networking meeting and attempted to make the connections that might get me new clients? November? October? I can’t even remember.

Still, it’s all part of the journey, right? As I answered again and again that I didn’t know what I really do in New Zealand, a letter was waiting in my in-box. When I finally opened it, I learnt that I have passed the second and most difficult step on the tenure journey. It is possible that the dean or provost would decline a candidate who had such unanimous faculty support, but it would be unprecedented. Since I don’t think of myself as a particularly unprecedented person, it was this tenure step that had me the most nervous. And now, on this day when I presented at the University of Auckland, my home university has put me one giant step closer to tenure.

Let’s look at the contradictions, shall we? I loved my career in the US, loved my colleagues and students at the university; loved my colleagues and clients at Kenning. Here, in New Zealand, I love my colleagues at NZCER and enjoy the work there—but it is a partial fill for the many pieces of work I love and I have not been able to round it out yet. In a single week I’ll get the letter that takes me most of the way towards ensuring that I’ll have a job for life in the US and I’ll install my dream kitchen in my dream house in New Zealand. Anyone else out there noticing the key disjuncture?

But here I’m working on little sleep and have been up for nearly 19 hours, so let’s just stop right now and celebrate. I got a lovely tenure letter today, a letter I’ve been thinking about since I began my doctorate in 1996. It was lovely receiving the letter in a university setting today, with American academics even, who explained to the kiwis present that this was A Really Big Deal. And it’s a Really Big Deal that all the walls are up in the new house, that the painting has begun, that people are hustling to get things primed before the kitchen comes next week. It’s a big deal that Carolyn is coming next week. It’s a big deal that I had a really excellent conversation yesterday with someone at a consulting firm who is interested in forwarding my name to folks who might hire me for serious and high-level work. In case that weren’t enough reason for delight, this week Michael and I celebrated the 20^th anniversary of our first date. And home from the train station, Rob and Michael and I stood in the moonless night and watched the milky way. I stood in awe of the billions of stars scattered like handfuls of glitter across the sky and my breath caught at the sight of a shooting star I don’t know where anything is going, but I know that even in the confusion there is ample reason to jump for joy.