Stepping down as a manager

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Met with my therapist today. I had not really been 100% honest with him about my suicidal thoughts, and was able to open up a little more today. Also told him about my potential job change. He thought it was good, he had kind of advised me to do that earlier, but just was waiting for me to come to the place where I could accept it.
He has been telling me all along that he thought I must be a good accountant because of all of the trust my bosses place in me, and he thinks it is a good reflection on me that they are willing to try to accomodate me.

I know a lot of people probably dont like Christianity, but my therapist is a Christian. He told me today basically the same thing my pastor said in his sermon Sunday.

There are times in life when we are powerless and we have to turn to a greater power. For Christians that greater power is God. When we hope in God, we have to turn things over to God. Do the best we can, even if our best is flawed, and then it is God's problem, not ours. So if we dont get the solution we thought we should, we can know we did all we can and the results are in god's hand, not ours.

I hope you can freelance, and get decent health insurance.

I wish God were able to (in practical terms) obtain for you both of those things.

Sorry about that, sir. I have read them now.

I'm glad this is happening for you. I'm glad you have an understanding boss. That's why I tell Aspies to do something like accounting, or anything professional and white-collar.

I don't believe in God--but I think religion is a personal matter and is not really arguable. Theology is interesting in its many manifestations.

I'm friends with religious people. And a church helped my brothers and I when I was growing up. You should keep talking to your pastor as well as your therapist. Oftentimes a pastor has good practical solutions that other people wouldn't have thought of. And there's a support system there in religion that shouldn't be underestimated.

There was some neurological study where they did MRIs on people while they were praying. The reward center of their brains lit up. Faith really is biologically good for you.

Keep us updated!

I met with my boss yesterday. She would like for my transition to be done by year end, but she would like to wait a while to announce my transition, but I have told three people (asked them to be confidential and I think they will be.)
She said sh might have to lean on me thru audit (Jan-Feb).
She was trying to figure out how to shuffle workloads. She asked me how many companies a financial analyst can handle. We have 5 that we do the accounting for and 5 others that have their own accountants.
One analyst has two companies. My boss asked if she could handle more, but I said she could not. She has some physical limitations.
Usually my more senior analyst handles the other three. The employee that will probably be fired is struggling to do the work for one. My boss asked me if I thought three companies was a full time job. I said for most people it would be, but I could handle more. We kind of agreed that I would do the three companies and the hospital related work for the joint ventures, but not management, hiring, oversight or review. She said one concern is that the pay grades for senior analyst and manager are far apart and she said she was concerned about paying me less and me doing almost the same amount of work. I think our pay ranges are a pretty broad range, so I am not worried.
She also had a financial specialist give notice (a lower level position) so she wanted to get that out of the way before announcing my change.
then just as I was about to leave yesterday I get an e-mail from my accounting specialist (who leaves an hour earlier at4PM) that she is giving her notice. She has a high school degree and has access to payroll info and is upset that she is the lowest paid specialist, but she is the only one who does not have a college degree. My boss is out of the office the next two days at a conference, but she is going to call the employee today.
I told a close friend of mine who is a manager in patient accounts, one of the joint venture managers, and another person that I am stepping down, but asked them all to keep it confidential.
Also yesterday I found out my son had been failing some classes and he kept it from us. I have a couple of bad habits - worrying about things, and worrying that my kids will have some of the same problems my sibling had. My younger brother ran away from home when he got in trouble in school. My son threatened to run away before and I was worried about him yesterday because my wife kept him home from school because he was upset, but she had to go to work. I know I should not worry about those things, but it is hard to turn it off.

I'm glad everything's going well on the work front.

Sorry about your son. Yes, you do have to be vigilant (but don't let your son see too much of that vigilance). You do have to "worry" to a certain extent. Your son must be ashamed about the bad grades. What caused them? I forget how old he is--if he's not a junior/senior in high school, I don't believe they would go on any "record.' Your son can turn this around.

I would work with him on making improvements--without showing judgement of the past. He should just think about the future. It would be great if you could be Socratic about it--but maybe you don't have the time for that. And school is a didactic environment--and he must adjust to that.

Under a 504 or an IEP, getting "bad grades" really does not affect the child's record. Perhaps, it shows why he needs the 504 or the IEP. Even in "regular" school, no college would look at a kid's middle school grades.

He has lots of time. How far is he from attaining the "mainstream." To be honest, I would advocate him being as "mainstreamed" as possible to ensure a better future.

When I was growing up, I went to a "special school." I never had an IEP or a 504 because they didn't exist yet.

If you don't mind me asking: what is it that caused him to have the IEP/504 in the first place? I probably should remember....but I don't at this point.

It's quite possible that your son needs more individualized instruction, especially a one-on-one tutor who is experienced with whatever his "disorder" is. He also needs to love to learn, and to want to advance in the world. I hope the negative is not accentuated within his school situation.

The reason for this: Quite frankly, in lots of Special Ed, kids are not really TAUGHT much at all---whether because the class is too disruptive, the teacher is apathetic, or any number of reasons. Academics tends not to be emphasized. The emphasis is more on the behavior/conformity of the student. The tutor would offer more academics--especially one who is experienced with kids who are not in the "mainstream."

I'm also thinking: If you placed your concerns about your son within the Parents' Forum, I think you would receive excellent advice from people who are experienced with this sort of thing.

...(For the " doing accounting "/etc. , anyway)...A little late for me , huh ? Or , a LOT ?




rtie"]I hope you can freelance, and get decent health insurance.

I wish God were able to (in practical terms) obtain for you both of those things.[/quote]

Update

I have been dragging my heals a little about getting my resume out in case things dont work out, but I think I will get that done soon, maybe tonight.

My boss finally replaced the manager who quit about 2 months ago with the internal candidate.

Now this morning in my update with my boss she tells me that the manager who left is coming back as an assistant controller. She will be my manager and manage the other JV employees. It could be interesting. She was very strict.
My boss said she would send out an announcement today and that she would also let my employees know the change to my job is coming down the road, probably in January.

I am not sure if I mentioned my job is 40 minutes from home.
I told my boss that I thought the pay range for my new position was a little low, but she said they have recently done a salary survey.

So I definitely need to look to see for myself what is out there, but at least I have a good job in a familiar place and I can always play the "you are paying me 10% less" if my stressful management responsibilities are not reduced enough.
I have been nervous about looking elsewhere because I dont want to leave the familiar for the unknown, but if I can find a good opportunity without a reduction and closer to home and without the management responsibility, that would be worth the risk of the unknown.

It sounds like they spun you out to a SME role. In that case, if you're still looking for jobs, you might look into larger enterprises that have the complex issues and scale to support a SME, rather than just a top shelf analyst. The devil you know is usually worse than the devil you don't (considering that you already know it's a devil).

I am still in transition.

A person who had just recently left the other position as accounting manager came back to be controller, my new boss. She was off most of the holidays, so it was kind of relaxing just getting caught up on the accounting work.
Now she is back and I am showing her all that oversight over my area of accounting entails. She is of course seeing the areas where I fell short (being short handed and dealing with a person who was not able to do the job and was fired).
One thing was failure to pay a few thousand dollars of sales tax. there will probably be a few hundred dollars in interest and penalties. I can just feel the disapproval and judgement flowing from her to me. She is one of those quiet, serious people that always make me feel inferior and like I am doing something terribly wrong. I made a mistake and I was a terrible manager and that is why I stepped down. If they think I am so terrible and disorganized that I should not even do a Senior accountant job, they should just fire me.
I probably have been underpaid tens of thousands of dollars so I dont feel to bad about the penalties. is that a terrible way to look at it?

I am going to apologize in advance to any IT people, but IT was changing peoples access so managers can unpost journal entries, but not create them and non-managers cant unpost them. But they put my access as a manager, not as a regular accountant. So now I cant do anything at the busiest time of the year when I was planning to work late tonight.

I worked late 3 nights last week and worked about 9 hours this weekend. I am doing double duty as an accountant and manager until the new controller is trained.