I love my job!

Ever since I was upped to senior manager, my life has changed. Really. Becoming manager was nothing in comparison - more work, more complexity, more responsibility, but still, it was ultimately just me managing my territories. What is making the big difference now is people. Managing people is the best! And I don't mean this in a powertrippy kind of way at all. Managing people is challenging, stimulating, fascinating - it's worth getting up for in the morning. Maybe not for everyone, but blimey, I love it. It's made all the difference for me. I love figuring out why people do what they do (and not necessarily what they're supposed to do), and be there in a way to help them overcome their obstacles and process issues and motivational issues and even shortcomings if you will, as much as trying to figure out answers to their actual work-related questions (not that easy, considering that their territories are new to me). I love coaching people to perform at a better level, whether that involves writing (yes, go figure, I'm coaching native speakers of English on their writing :) or client management or time management or just interpersonal relations, and I love mediating between people as well. My boss frankly admitted that she thought she might have killed last week's worst offender if I hadn't been there to intervene and take her off her hands.
It helps of course that I've gotten an incredible amount of acceptance from everyone on the team - even the people with seniority who I got passed over were not only overwhelmingly gracious, but have come and sought my advice and confided in me. Everything just kind of fell into place in a perfect way, and although my workload is insane, what with all the digital and iTunes and Xbox deals, and although I'm spending more hours at work than ever, I'm actually enjoying it. I never thought I would say this. In my world, anything not related to creative writing was never really worthy of my full attention. And here I am, all absorbed in my little niche of corporate Hollywood, aglow and abuzz over how to distribute work load and redirect work flow within the team so each member is challenged at the right level and can contribute most according to their strengths and weaknesses. Who'd have thunk? Plus I'm actually happy when I get called in to deal with a crisis situation, because I feel I really have something to contribute. Must be that counseling training I went through a couple of years ago. I finally feel like I'm being put to good use, that I'm not only using my analytical, project-management, problem-solving and language skills (two native French-speakers on the team, yay!) but that while at it, I'm also having a distinct influence on my social environment, coaching both downward and upward. I've been around here long enough to have pretty good opinions on what works and what doesn't - and to be able to actually do something about what doesn't work (mostly communication) is a thrill. Really.