Retirement - one week in

We've made great progress in the week that I've been off. We've cleaned and organized, found an organization to take any furniture or appliances we don't want to take with, packed more boxes, and made a few more trips to Goodwill. Yesterday we stopped at Zambitos Realtors and Mark Z will be coming out next week to advise us on which projects it makes the most sense to do, and what we should just pull the plug on. Conceivably, at this rate, we could have the house on the market by the end of the month!

Yet another crossroad

Here is it, about 2 years since my last post. Much has happened since then. After completing my degree I did form a Scholarly Communications (and Special Collections) unit - SC2 for short. Initially we thought it would be staffed by Jennifer Kegler, Charlie Cowling, possibly Dana Laird, and me. Ultimately it was Mary Jo, Charlie and me, with the "promise" of a clerk some day in the future. In December 2017, Mary Jo stepped down as director of the library, and Jennifer Smathers was named Interim Director. JJ had been backing away from her spot for much of the fall semester, and so when the shakeup happened, I contacted Bob and offered MJO a spot in our unit. This turned out to be a good fit, all around.
Shortly after, the library was reorganized into teams, with ours being the first to be named. As a unit or team, we were cohesive and worked well together. We accomplished a lot and built the new program from the ground up. Our major initiatives were Open Access (the OA resolution passed Senate prior to the SUNY Resolution came down from the BOT), Open Education Resources, Digital Commons, and several outreach events, including the American Soldier Transcription Event held in the fall of 2018.
In the summer of 2018, the four Team Leads (Mia, Ken, Erin and I) started receiving a stipend, and eventually started having weekly meetings with JS. Not surprisingly, I always felt like the outsider in the group, the others having regular interaction with her through the ALMA migration process. ALMA took over the focus of the library for almost 2 years. As hard as I pushed to get the promised clerk, it never happened, as JS came up with one excuse after another. It was clear that she didn't see the value of our work, and didn't support it. The situation became untenable, eventually I found myself angry more often than not.

We intensified our TN home search and in the fall we thought we had found one. We put in and had accepted, a purchase offer on a home in Cookeville on Hwy 79, but the deal fell through when the termite inspection uncovered rather extensive structural damage. Even though the sellers offered to fix it, we decided to withdraw our purchase offer, so it was back to the drawing board. Finally we went down in November, I was determined not to come home without having made an offer. We toured a few homes, but when we found the one at 1366 Hillendale Rd, Crossville, it felt like it we had found the one. We closed on January 15, and when I got back to work I turned my retirement letter in, effective 3/30/19.