Thursday, June 14, 2012

New Beginnings

Sorry for the delay! I really didn't plan on waiting for a month before blogging again, but I wasn't exactly sure how to explain the "changes" and then life just got busy again!
No, there will be no new mouths to feed.....but Jared has made a job change!  He put his resignation in with Encana three weeks ago and then started with his new company, Impetro, last week. 
This change was not expected.  Jared felt committed to persevere with his job another year or two, but it became evident that this job was not a good fit for him.  After some prayer (and sleep!) we were able to get some insight about the past year and a half.  Yes, it was a good position (drilling engineer) and Jared had a lot of success and learned valuable skills to further his career.  The negative part was that he was so successful that he received almost all of the work and was working feverishly all day and getting calls all night long and on weekends.  The lack of sleep and increased stress for weeks on end was not a good situation for Jared or our family.  By the way,...coming home to a family with three wild toddlers will drain you also!  We knew that we couldn't keep going at this pace for long and prayed for God to help us endure our situation or help us make changes to keep our family healthy.
In the meantime, a former co-worker of Jared's started working for a start-up company in the petroleum industry.  He was so excited about it and kept pursuing Jared to come work with them.  After months of talks with members of this new company, Jared found himself more and more excited about the opportunities that he would have with this new job.  The qualifications fit Jared perfectly and he would be finally using a lot of his God-given talents more effectively.  Jared realized that he is not a "big-company" person and loves being able to be more creative with his work.  This new opportunity will give Jared the experience of developing a business from the ground up (with somebody elses money!).  His schedule will be a lot more flexible and he will not have to get phone calls all hours of the night and weekend.  We already feel refreshed as a family as we've had time to have quiet times together in the morning and have daddy more refreshed!  We have a peace knowing that this is a lifestyle change we have committed to (not just a work change, but commitments to be in the Word more, being more balanced, having more fun as a family) and definitely not a change we made for financial reasons (actually taking a decrease in salary).
I really should have Jared write this blog, because I have a really hard time describing what his new job is!  But, it sounds like they are still forming the business plan and figuring out what day to day operations will look like.  He spent a week up in Calgary, Canada, meeting members of the board and helping to develop their business plan.  For now, it sounds like he will be doing some engineering/drilling consulting with companies, marketing a new innovative drilling tool that they are manufacturing in Calgary, and working on developing apps for the drilling industry. 
I've learned that I need to be patient, which is a challenge for me and my desire to make plans way in advance!  We don't know what day to day will look like for Jared yet.  There is even a small possibility that we may move up to Canada for a 3-6 month period to fill in an immediate void in the company.