Thirty Days
What a month can hold when nothing is fully decided
Rumor has it we’ll have 30 days to decide.
Thirty days to look at your career and answer a yes or no question.
I don’t know if that’s how it will work. I don’t know when the clock starts, or what happens after you decide, or whether day one and day thirty are meaningfully different.
If you decide early, does that become your last day?
Do you wait until day twenty-nine to work as long as possible?
I know how that sounds. I enjoy my work.
Or does the decision just mark the start of a different clock, something that stretches beyond the 30 days?
Does it depend on when you decide?
None of this is confirmed. But the questions are already here.
When I look at my org, I try to estimate what 30 days could change.
Company-wide, I’ve heard numbers around eight percent. In my world, that would be around twenty-three people. That already feels like a lot.
But when I scan the names I’ve worked closely with over the past year, I can count six people without thinking very hard who would be eligible. And that’s just a quick pass.
Not everyone will take it. I know that.
But even a fraction of that is a large amount of institutional knowledge to absorb, redistribute, or lose.
When I think about the people who might be deciding, I find myself thinking about different stages of life.
The ones I feel most for are people that were college hires who have been here long enough to be eligible.
When I was in my late forties, my kids were still in elementary school. Being home with them might have been wonderful. It also would have been something very different than the life we were building.
There isn’t a single right answer. Just a lot of lives intersecting with the same window.
I keep coming back to the idea of 30 days.
Is that a long time or a short time?
When my kids were newborns, a month went by in a blur. Days and nights blurred together and somehow the calendar kept advancing.
When I was a kid waiting for something I cared about, a month could feel endless.
Right now, I don’t know which version this will be.
Tomorrow the information gets announced. It will have been two weeks since the announcement. I don’t know where those two weeks went.
If the clock starts then, is 30 days June 5th?
Is that when things change?
June 12th is my daughter’s high school graduation. I already planned time off to bake for it. That was on the calendar long before any of this.
No matter what decision I make, that week after the 30 days will be full. Not just busy. Full.
I read recently that the key to a good retirement is relationships.
I’m an introvert. Meeting people takes effort. Keeping in touch takes intention.
At the same time, both of my daughters will likely move out in the fall.
So independent of any decision I make, my life is already about to change.
Thirty days sits inside a much larger transition.
I don’t know yet what I’ll decide.
I don’t know what the organization will look like in 30 days.
I don’t know how many people will take the offer, or how much will shift, or how it will feel when we’re in it.
I don’t even know if 30 days will feel long or short once the clock actually starts.
But it’s a number I keep turning over.
Thirty days.
Alison + Wiggins