Lou Pickney's Online Commentary
Leaving Tampa
Wednesday
March 15, 2006
"American girls all weather and noise
Playing the changes for all of the boys"
-Counting Crows "American Girls"
"Saying goodbye should be easy to do
But the bittersweet memory is tangled in you"
-Blue Merle "Bittersweet Memory"
In a major shocker, I gave notice yesterday to Bubba, as I'm going to be leaving Tampa to go to work for a company called Adenus in Birmingham, Alabama.
Adenus is a wastewater management company that my Dad and some of his brothers created. It has been very successful in Tennessee, and now expansion is coming to Alabama. This was a VERY difficult decision for me, as I love the BTLS show, the city of Tampa (and St. Petersburg, where I moved at the first of the year), and my many friends who I'll be leaving behind.
Why am I doing this? Because I'll be able to be part of a business start-up in a brand new territory, filling a position that is vital to the company from a trust standpoint (and if you can't trust family, who can you trust?) Assuming that all works out with the details this weekend at my meeting in Nashville, it's for me the chance to be a market manager. With the business experience I have picked up in recent years, I had been getting the itch to go into business for myself. I do it to a degree as it is with my websites and Google AdSense (I love Google, by the way -- they protect their privacy and fight the federal government to do so, and they treat smaller publishers properly.)
I leave the BTLS show on good terms. I'll still be enthusiastic about the show as far as spreading the word and encouraging people to sign up for Sirius. For three years I had the great fortune to work for my all-time favorite radio show, thanks to Bubba finding my Radio Hot Talk site and contacting me out of the blue. I was reborn from the ashes of the mental burnout suffered under 13 months of torture by the Executive Meddler at WTSP. For Bubba, I'll forever be grateful for the opportunity to be the Affiliate Relations director for the show, which was without question the most fun I've ever had as a job. Damn you, FCC, for ruining that.
A negative from last week now isn't so bad. Jenn, a girl I'd been chasing (and who had done her share of chasing me) had me come meet up with her and some friends a week ago tonight at a place called Dee's Den in Pinellas County. It was a fun little place, a small little bar with mostly locals and a nice atmosphere for a dive type bar. It's the type of place I'd write about on her normally, but after hearing endless questions after the Melissa saga last summer, I have become *very* careful about not writing about the women I date on here, lest I start getting questions for months on end about it. So the story went untold.
Unfortunately for me, she met another guy there, and she told me over the weekend that she "thought she might've found a new boyfriend" in him. Her aloofness was the refreshing honesty I've often said that I'd been looking for, but her refreshing honesty was the stomach-punch on the Bill Simmons scale. But I suppose it would've been worse to find a nice relationship and then have to move, no?
The person I feel worst for is Gary Graham, my friend of 13 years who was supposed to move down THIS WEEKEND to move into my two-bedroom apartment to be my roommate for the duration of the present lease. I'm not one who takes breaking my word lightly, and I'm going to do everything I can to do right by him in helping him find an apartment. It makes me sad to think that we won't have the chance to room together, since I think we would've gotten along great and torn things up on the night life scene. But this business opportunity is too much for me to pass up, and for me to be able to make a significant move both professionally (with my personal career) and for the family business is something I just can't pass up.
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