20 September 2017

Seasonally Adjusting My Life, Again

I left the Census Bureau in 2005 and moved to Luxembourg to work on contracts for Eurostat. It was such an amazing experience. And a mid-life crisis of epic proportion.

The move was triggered by a division chief at Census who forbid me to work on a book.  Kathy McDonald-Johnson and I had just signed a contract to write a book on seasonal adjustment diagnostics.  And my boss's boss told me that I couldn't work on the book, even on my own time using my own computer.  He said that working on the book would keep me from putting my all into my work at Census, and I started that afternoon looking for another job.

While in Europe, and shortly thereafter, it became increasingly clear that my marriage wasn't working and that healing wasn't in the cards.  So here was another phase of my mid-life crisis, and this time it was playing out much more publicly than was comfortable for me.

And I shut down.

I stopped looking for new clients.

I stopped all marketing efforts.

I stopped research.

I stopped blogging.

In the 12 years since I left Census, I never stopped thinking about that book that Kathy and I were going to write, but I never started writing it.  I didn't write anything.

It's been five years since my divorce was final.  It's taken this long before I've been able to write again. I know I have a book inside of me, but it might not be that seasonal adjustment diagnostics book after all.  We'll see.  In the meantime, I'm working for clients, and Miriam and I are working on web courses and programming projects again.  And I'm going to keep writing.