Challenges and opportunities

I have a couple challenges and opportunities that I'm faced with.

I'm in the midst of a transition in my job. The systems that I currently support are in the process of being decommissioned. It isn't anything imminent...it will be years before the users are completely transitioned off of the system.

That said, I'm faced with the unpleasant reality that this particular job is not going to be long term. I actually enjoy my job, the commute is great, and the pay/benefits are very good. In short, I really wouldn't move if I didn't have to.

But it seems I don't have much of a choice, thus the first part of my challenge: I will need to make a career move sometime in 2010. (ugh)

I despise job hunting. I was recruited into this job by a friend, and I was at my previous job for 5 years before that. So I really haven't hunted for a job in over 8 years.

There are opportunities at my current company, but that is also a challenge. My company will pay for pretty much any technical training I could ever ask for, which is an amazing opportunity. But...I am a UNIX/Linux guy right now, and I love my job. The company I work for is completely non-unix/linux. In fact, it is pretty much the biggest non-linux company around.

So I can't really find a job in my current company doing the same thing I'm doing now. If I didn't love my job so much, it would be pretty easy to take advantage of the training and just swap jobs...and that certainly isn't off the table, by any stretch of the imagination.

If I was early in my career the choice would be easier. But in the mid-to-senior level that I'm in, its hard to sacrifice a bunch of experience and expertise and jump into something completely different. Not to mention that I'm used to being the absolute expert on the things I work on, and I'm not looking forward to that changing (even in the short term).

Anyway, I have a lot of work to do. From tidying up my resume, to taking advantage of a bunch of training...

If only I wasn't so lazy...