I'll leave it to Tony Danza.

I got a few e-mails today that reminded me why I liked being in management in my former life. For some reason, I was commissioned for a flurry of letters of recommendation for academic programs a few months back, and the results are drifting in. One was successful, one came close, and the other sounds promising, last I heard.

I'll never regret my relatively few years in management (three in California, although I actually had management positions in the student media for seven of my eight college semesters). It's great to see the evolution of people I hired or helped hire, and I'm still blown away by what an amazing team we assembled in California. I'm proud to say that I still consider many of them friends, especially those who read my blog (shotout!).

But, for all its high points, management just doesn't have much allure for me anymore. I'm guessing that mostly has to do with the fact that I don't know what I'm doing in my new profession. I'm the least experienced and the least qualified of just about anyone in my department. It'll likely be years before that changes.

I'm enjoying my return to drone status. There's a unique pressure to being a supervisor, though I'm sure it's different for each boss. For some, it's the pressure of feeling you're responsible for the work of people you can't directly control. But for me, it was the pressure of making the right decisions for my staff on a daily basis. As an editor, you're not only messing with people's writing (a very personal and flammable skill), but you're also making decisions about what they will write, how they will write it, and how it will be presented. I never really worried about my boss' reaction (sorry, Rich). What ate at me was how my choices would go over with the staff .... and the readers, although that's a whole different relationship to analyze.

The day I announced I was leaving the book store a few months back, I found out that the cafe staff had decided to support me for the "lead" position, which is like an assistant manager. I was far less experienced than most of my coworkers, and that made it even more of a compliment. While it's not exactly an executive position in a news agency, it was a sign that people still trusted my ability to lead...or at least to keep track of shipments of mocha mix and vanilla soy milk.

I'm sure it's just a matter of time before I end up back in management, but for now it's nice to be told what to do, do it well, and still squeeze in some random blog-form navel-gazing.

ps, Today's pic via Toothpaste for Dinner, which has merchandise that cracks me up.