How Long Is The Appropriate Amount Of Time To Stay? – Part 1

April 6, 2016

Recently on the blog, we’ve been talking about BMI and The Nightly Show and leaving and not leaving…

And to me, all of that just kind of makes me wonder – how long is the appropriate amount of time to stay?

Sometimes I am the person who sticks with something way too long – when it looks like there’s maybe not value left, I’m still there trying to find it. (And sometimes I do find it! Ba-bam!)

And sometimes I’m the person who’s like, “Oh, this job is not working. Bye!” almost immediately, when perhaps there was value to be found there. (Or not. Who knows.)

And I’m not 100% sure what the real true and correct answer is for knowing when to leave things, and when to stay.

As I mentioned, there was a time where I thought about leaving my Nightly Show job to go work on a sitcom I love. And now that seems craaaaaaaaaazy – just crazy. ‘Cause I’m an editor. And I LOVE it.

And then, with BMI, I didn’t stick it out ’til the bitter end. I mean, I know I was crying a lot. I was dragging my feet to go in there. I wasn’t happy. But it *conceivably* maybe perhaps might have been able to be turned around.

[Edited to add in Mid-May: I actually now, after having spent some time away from it, think to myself, “maybe I could have turned it around.. I think I could go to class right now…”]

[Edited to add slightly later in May: I’m still on the email list and just got an email about the 10-minute musicals. And nope. Maybe I cannot actually imagine going back right now after all… But maybe thought! Right? Always maybe!]

But then there have been times in the past… there was once when my boss at a logging job found out I was staying late to learn about assistant editor stuff. And she yelled at me. She thought I was trying to hard to move up too fast – even though I was just trying to build skills.

She told me that there was a logger who’d been there for a year, so the next available AE job would be his. And she yelled at me. This was not a nice conversation.

After she left, I thought, “I don’t like to be spoken to like that. And I don’t wait in line for jobs. I don’t do stuff based on seniority. I want to know that what I do makes a difference, not just how long I stick around.” I wrote an email that I was leaving, left my keycard, and never came back.

And this is where I’ll pick up tomorrow.

I'd love to hear from you! So whaddya say?