I’ve had a ton of jobs over the years. Not counting freelancing, I’ve worked for ten different companies since I entered the workforce fifteen years ago. Depending on your industry, that might not sound like a lot, but I’m only thirty-two! I’d rather have stayed and grown with a single company, but those days are long gone, and the cycle starts again today. Here’s a personal update and a bit about how that might impact my output here.

I’ve been doing all kinds of stuff since I got my first job at a Subway when I was seventeen. I made sandwiches, then I managed the people who made the sandwiches while still assembling a mean Italian BMT myself. A variety of roles came and went as I dillied and dallied over going back to school to finish my degree. By August of last year, I found myself working seventy-two-hour weeks as a quality analyst and production supervisor at the place that makes lids for Ball jars. I couldn’t sustain it, so I applied for a job as a lab technician at a factory the next town over on a whim. I got it and started the day after Labor Day.

I freaking loved it! I had a ton of free time since I only worked forty hours a week, so I started this blog on September 5. The new company was an Italian plastics giant. Eight years ago, they bought the reclaimed brownfield site once home to General Motors’ sprawling Guide Lamp division in Anderson. Across two plants, we produced 55,000 tons of polypropylene compounds each year in the form of pellets.

Raw thermoplastics -plastics that liquefy when heated and solidify when they’re cooled- need help to reach their full potential. My company added stuff to virgin plastic in order to make compounds that we sold to be melted and molded into things like car dashboards or washing machine agitators. In Anderson, we cranked out about 55 kilotons of plastic per year- 40 at my plant and 15 at the facility next door, where things like bottle wrappers and construction fencing were recycled.

Being a lab tech and testing characteristics of our products was fine, but I wanted more responsibility. On another whim, I decided to apply for the open position of production planner at the same company in February. I got it last month. Now that my replacement in the quality lab is trained, I start my new role today. I’ll be responsible for planning and scheduling all North American production of polypropylene compounds totaling 40 kilotons a year across five lines.

To say that I’m excited about my new role would be an understatement. I’ll be working closely with some great people! In addition to more responsibilities and a higher salary, I’m looking forward to a new schedule: I’ ve gotten pretty good at going to bed when it’s still light out, but I’ve craved a normal 8-to-5 for the past three years. Waking up so early that it’s technically still late throws things off for me from a mental health perspective.

I love seeing new posts from the three or four personal blogs I read when I wake up. That’s why I’ve scheduled my posts for 4 o’clock when I started writing here. My process is simple: after I figure out what I’m posting the next day, I finish it, schedule it, and fall asleep. The next morning, I give the post a quick check one more time around 3:30 before it goes live. Depending on my ability to reprogram my alarm clocks, I’ll be waking up closer to six now. Because of that, new posts here will start go live two hours later than they have been. I’ll go back to publishing at four if I get negative feedback.

More people are starting to read this blog and follow it. I’m humbled! In addition to the typical schoolhouse, courthouse, and artesian well stuff, I’ve got some other cool posts planned for the near future. I’ll still publish something new every day, and I don’t expect there to be any other changes here, aside from one: a podcast. More on that later, but I already have a soundproofed studio chock full of SM58s, so I i think I might start using to augment my research and writing.

I’m excited! We’ll see what happens as far as the new job, the changes to when my posts publish, and the possible podcast. I’ll pop back in here with occasional personal updates like I already do but in the meantime, I’ll resume my regular posts tomorrow at six.