u/MysteriousAffect3903

Work in the Puget Sound region as an engineer, and I have been at my current role for about 9 months. I haven't felt like it's a good fit for me pretty much since I started, and it hasn't really gotten any better.

I found a job posting with a team I used to work closely with, and always wanted to join. The Boeing guideline is that a person has to be in their role for 18 months before they can apply elsewhere and take a new role. The hiring manager on the other team seems very interested in bringing me on. Seems like the rule can be bent, but I am not sure what is involved.

Is there anything I should do, or just apply for the job? I think my manager would see that I did, so I am a bit anxious about that, but I had already made the decision to start looking when I could. Would my manager have to sign off on me leaving before 18 months? We are fairly short-handed now, so I'm not sure how open they'd be to that.

Any input would be appreciated!

I recently had the pleasure of reading Alan Watts' "The Book". To sum it up (far too) briefly, it compiles a lot of his main philosophical themes to support the overall thrust of the book-that we are not separate from the universe.

I had heard him talk about this a lot in his recordings, a primary example is how he would say the "world peoples like a tree apples". We are the Earth, we come out of it, not into it. I have known this intellectually for a long time, but somehow when I read the book it really hit deep. I really felt it and saw it. It's not that now everything is different with me, or how I act, but there was definitely a shift. When I think about it, I can still see this aspect to the nature of existence.

I was just feeling it when I was putting my son to bed, lying there talking to him. There is this separateness between us. He is him, and I am me. But he is also me, and I am also him. It just occurred to me, Alan Watts talked a lot about how our separateness from the world is something we are taught, and is an illusion. I don't know that I have ever heard him say it was a mistake, or wrong, though.

It seems like you can feel the separation of things, and the connection with everything, at the same time. The story he gives is that the creator (whatever he/she/they may be) made existence for the separation itself, to know itself. So, my son I can only know through my separateness from him. And that is beautiful. The other side of that is that it's beautiful to see my oneness with him.

So, to me, the takeaway is that the feeling of separation is an inherent trait of how things are, but it is possible to see behind the curtain. If you never take a second to realize it is all a game, or a dance, or a song, you might take it a bit too seriously. Games stop being so much fun when all you care about is winning. There is no winning at life, just like there is no winning at singing or dancing. There is just playing, and the players. When you can see these things, life takes on a different, more lighthearted quality. Life is meant to be played.

And I think that's lovely.

Just curious what people thought of the CEO webcast yesterday and how he addressed the union contracts negotiations. He seemed much more congenial than Ben's email last Friday. Is this part of the game, good cop, bad cop? Or was he genuine in wanting to work with the union to find something that works for both sides?