As I mentioned before, work has been extremely demanding, but the recent demands on my time, attention, and energy seem to be ebbing a bit. We are near to hiring someone to help me who I think is extremely competent and will be easy to work with, and will take much of the burden off me once she's up to speed. And she has a degree in geology, which makes her that much cooler (and I have absolutely no bias in this department whatsoever).

The ironic thing is that I was worried I wouldn't be able to be impartial when interviewing this woman. Some of my coworkers tried twice to do an end around me and hire her without any workload to back it up (and for those of you who've not done consulting work, billable workload is everything), and because of that a small part of me wanted to stick it to them by turning her away. But she won me over in her interview in spite of myself. She brought relevant examples of her previous work. She didn't lie about or exaggerate desired skills and experience she didn't posess. She was relaxed and friendly.

So in the end, this whole thing serves as a lesson to me not to let office politics get in the way, not only of hiring a potentially awesome employee, but of anything else. It's draining, unproductive, and causes much unnecessary stress, and I've been incredibly silly for letting it dominate the past couple of weeks of my life. And I'd have been screwing myself not to give her a fair shake. Shame on me.

And another good thing has come out of all this. Previously hesitant about making waves or voicing a potentially controversial opinion, I've suddenly found the inner strength to speak up for myself. I took the time to speak to my boss about certain concerns I had - wisely, I think, failing to mention that I felt threatened by my coworkers' previous efforts to bring this woman in - and the upshot is that I'm getting a bit of a promotion, some more responsibility, and some training out of it.

It's been a good week.