Wow, over six months since the last update. Very overdue.

Today’s the day I turn in my two weeks at Wizards. I’m just waiting on Riot’s response to my counter. Once I have that, I’ll put everything into motion. I would be lying if I said I didn’t have any anxiety. I do. A fair bit. The “confrontation” of telling my boss kept me up some last night. I spent a lot of yesterday writing drafts of messages, my official email for after I tell my boss, the message I’ll use to tell colleagues, and a list of who gets a call to tell them the news vs. who hears it via email.

Working at Wizards for this long made that list very long.

I feel a bit like they describe in Shawshank Redemption, about a prison who gets out after too long. The idea of changing jobs and going through being the new guy all over is very intimidating. I am glad the new job has some familiar faces to ease the transition.

The new job is going to be exciting. It’s going to be a lot of work too. I warned Katie that I probably won’t have many 40-hour workweeks for a while. Not that I plan to work myself to the bone, but I am definitely going to doing more as Magic’s team has been so large and the team at Riot is going to be much smaller as we are building and launching this game. But that is also part of what makes this exciting.

I talked to a friend who left Wizards and went to Microsoft for a while. He eventually came back to Wizards and I asked why, and he talked about how at Microsoft he had zero ability to see his impact on the business and the product he was working on. Too many hands, too many shared inputs, clouding that ability to perceive it. At Magic, even today, I can still point to things and see things I started or did, impacting the game. But that is getting less and less despite my seniority there.

Riot’s game, Riftbound, is just launching their first set and I’ll be there to help launch set two, and more. And I’m going to have a large impact on it. One I’ll be able to undeniably see and point at.

Barring surprises my last day is going to be Nov. 11th, which is 1 month shy of hitting 14 years here. My plan is to take a 5 day weekend after the 11th and start the new job on the 17th. Work for basically a week and then fly to Atlanta for Thanksgiving. Then I suspect I’ll come back from Atlanta and fly to LA before then traveling to Paris for the final big event of a sister game at Riot, Team Fight Tactics. Going to be a crazy whirlwind to finish out the year, but I cannot wait.

Katie and I had intended to go and drive to the Seattle offices for Riot. They are on Mercer Island, which is one of the richer parts of town (generally.) But Saturday laziness got us, and then Sunday was rainy and dreary and we decided to just stay-in and watch Redzone instead.

The work stuff is obviously the biggest news but a few other updates. Healthwise I continue on. I need to lose weight. As always. I am trying to use our treadmill. I am also excited one of the Riot benefits is money for a gym membership and I know going to a physical gym, if I can bake it into my routine, is a big element of my past successes. So, we’ll see.

Katie’s health is doing okay. I think we may set up an appointment to see her MS doctor for a check-in. I checked that the new company’s insurance should allow us to keep him. But also we need to find a new Primary doc. Ours got let go when the hospital closed the clinic we would go to, and she hasn’t resurfaced at any other office or clinic around us. So we’re finally admitting we need to find a new one. I had started looking but the first one I found that I liked was accepting patients but didn’t have any availability in the coming 3 months. So… not accepting new patients? We’ll see. I’ll find someone for us.

Dog-wise, doing well. Duke just got his annual shots and he is still the big drooly oaf. Everyone loves him. Ozzie is still the saint who plays with Duke and puts up with his antics.

Otherwise not a lot to report up here. Excited for the new chapter and felt it was high time to do a new post on here. Love ya!