So it's been ages since I last posted here but, when I did, I had taken up a new job that dropped my pay by a third, in exchange for massively improved workload and working environment. It also came with much nicer colleagues, and it was making me rethink whether I reeeaaalllyy needed to retire particularly early. It was relaxing and fun.
So. Only a short time in, someone else quit - and I was invited to apply for their (more senior, higher-paying) position. I did, got it, and had a short-term bump in workload while I adjusted to the new role, but by January everything was all nice and optimised again and I was looking forward to that work-life-balance thing again. Then COVID hit...
For various reasons too boring to get into, I really blew my 'cover' in developing our COVID response. I don't think it was too hard to see what was heading our way, but in practice many other people didn't see it, and I did some things that made the whole experience much less punishing than it could otherwise have been, and then I did some other things that helped us evaluate the fallout and do some forward planning... and, long story short, in the process I attracted the sort of high profile that I had sort of been trying to get away from when I moved to this job...
Now my boss is retiring, and I've been asked to take on that role on an interim basis for the coming year. Eventually they'll advertise it, but it's the sort of thing you advertise internationally, and this isn't the best moment for an international search... So I am now making substantially more than I was in the position I left to "downshift" here, but I am also managing that largest staff I have ever managed, during a period of significant institutional and sectoral upheaval... The staff are happy I've taken on the role, and I like working with them - it is still in every respect a better working environment than the one I left. The assumption is that the role will become permanent - and I do plan at least to apply for the permanent role, if only to prevent them hiring someone worse than me to fill it :-) If they find someone better, I will genuinely gratefully go back to the role I already held...
None of this is /bad/, and I feel a bit guilty posting about all of this when lots of people are losing jobs due to COVID... But I am still a bit thrown by what feels like a sort of accidental failure of the plans that led us to move here in the first place... Since they haven't even advertised the permanent role yet, I do still have some time to see whether I really want to keep doing this - I don't think it would cause a crisis for me to just say I don't want it (but I do worry, based on past experience, that it could create a situation where I am in fact still doing the work, while someone else takes the title and the pay...).
I don't know whether I have a question here - I don't /think/ I'm doing a OMY thing, but I guess it feels a little bit in that direction. We aren't at our target figure yet, although we could emergency FIRE if we had to, and the extra pay is all surplus getting us to the target faster... But we were sort of enjoying work not being a major 'centre of gravity', even if it meant a longer path to retirement...