First the news: I signed a contract to become a full-time employee with Accenture Federal Services. I have been working with them for approximately the past year as a freelancer and I'm excited about the new opportunities I will have as an employee. Yay!

So, what opportunities will I have?

  • I don't need to be working on getting my next assignment.
  • I've got a consistent and predictable income.
  • I can get promoted to leadership positions with greater exposure and influence.
  • I'll have paid time off.
  • I get to work on bigger and more interesting projects than I would typically get as a one person shop.

I could probably add more items to the list. What it comes down to is that they are basically all the typical benefits a person would expect to get from working for somebody else. It's not that anything extraordinary happened; it's that I was finally able to negotiate a salary that made it attractive enough for me to work for somebody else. Also, it's that I'm looking towards retirement. While I enjoy programming and building websites, I don't want to be writing code until I retire. I'm ready for a real adult job. I feel like I'm still a college student with the work I've been doing. Sure, I've gotten to be a pretty well paid college student. Now I get the chance to be a well paid adult.

The negotiation process took some time. I didn't get the salary I asked for. But, having taken the time to think about things objectively, I think I've definitely made the right choice. Yay!

As far as other news in my life? Life is good. Life keeps on keeping on. Eli will be graduating from Kindergarten on May 24. Lana conducted her second couples' workshop on May 6. I've been doing my best to lift weights three times a week.

It would probably be easier to fill in more details and provide more color commentary if I posted more frequently. But, I struggle with the conflict of just writing about my life without worrying about whether it's significant or not versus wanting to take the time to create a well written post. It's not so much that I'm concerned about respecting my readers' time; I don't have any readers. This is for me alone. And I guess that's part of the problem. If nobody besides me will ever end up reading what I write, then why should I bother writing? One reason I had started this blog in the first place was so that I would never forget the difficult time I had come through in my life. One reason I continue to write is so that I don't forget about all of the ordinary, exciting, challenging, significant and insignificant times of my life.

So, this is what I'm recording now. I feel like I should be writing more, but I don't want it to become another chore. I'm working on getting clear how I want to spend my resources and what type of return I'm getting for my investment. I'm living and enjoying each day and still figuring things out as I go.

This past year has taken me on an amazing transformation from the way things were. My financial well being has gone from one of the spectrum to the other. My employment status has completely changed direction. I went from self-employed to working for somebody else, not to dismiss going from unemployed to fully employed. I have undergone a huge change in focus and planning. Gone are the days of struggling to make a big splash as an online infopreneur. I'm back to the tried-and-true path of collecting a defined salary. I don't need to make some extraordinary monthly income to secure my financial independence within a year or two. I can walk the path towards financial independence over the next ten or so years. It's somewhat shocking for me to grasp how much things have changed. I guess that's my queue to wrap things up with my usual ending.

I give thanks to the Universe for the abundance it provides me. I am open and ready to receive.

Bhavatu sabba mangalam - May all beings be happy