I’m changing jobs.  After 5 1/2 years working at the Fermi (formerly GLAST) Science Support Center at the NASA Goddard Spacefight Center in Maryland, I’m headed out to the west coast to NASA Ames Research Center (near San Jose, CA) to work as the Information Systems Development Manager for the SOFIA project.  I start the day after President’s Day.  I hadn’t really planned on looking for a new position for another year or two when the work at the FSSC was scheduled to ramp down. However, I was at a developer conference and saw the job posting and was encouraged to apply for it by the gentleman who would be my boss and whom I knew from my current job.

So I did, mainly just to see what would happen and what this type of job would pay, not really expecting an offer as I didn’t think I quite had the qualifications they were looking for.  I guess they liked me since they called me back and flew me out for an interview.  A few weeks later they called me and offered me the job.  After much prayer and consideration, my wife and I decided that I should accept the position.  I’m quite excited about this new position but it does come with some worries, almost exclusively family related.

This is a big change.  I’ve been telecommuting (I live in Utah) for the past two years as my wife has a tenure track faculty position at a local university.  My new job requires me to be on location so I’ll be commuting physically now instead of on-line.  With the current economy (read real estate market) there is no way we can sell our new (14 month old) house for anything near what we bought it for.  Additionally, my wife’s faculty position is quite stable and she’s not going to give it up until we find her something equivalent in the Bay Area.  This means I’ll be spending the work week in California and the weekends home in Utah.  Luckily, the salary differential between the new position and my current one is such that this situation is feasible.  If it hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have accepted the offer.

And it’s not like this is a completely new situation for us.  I already travel quite a bit with my current position and will typically be gone for a week at a time when I do.  It’s just not usually every week.  We also done the commuter marriage in the past as well.  When I was finishing up my dissertation I spend 5 months in New Mexico while my wife was in Maryland with only one trip back.  Of course we only had three kids then instead of five but now the oldest is 12 and can help out more than she could when she was 6.

It will probably be hardest on the kids, especially right at first.  They are used to having Dad around all the time when they get home from school and in the evenings and now I won’t always be there.  It also means my wife has to shoulder all the taxi duty getting the kids to their various activities.  Luckily there aren’t so many of them at the moment.  By summer we intend to have a nanny to thelp out with the younger kids and around the house when I’m gone during the week.  So, in the end, we are a bit stressed, but we have a plan (and some experience) and we will make it work out.