It’s occurred to me this year that I’m one of those people who finds themselves in one abusive relationship after another. In my case, the relationships have been employer/employee, organization/individual. A counseling service in Melbourne, AUS (I still travel widely on the Web, thank you very much) lists a number of reasons why people may go from one bad hookup to the next to the next. Reading through it, I find several resonate as I consider my past job experiences:

• Jumping into a relationship too quickly before getting to know what the person is like.
• Ignoring the warning signs that something isn’t right: not listening to your gut.
• Giving up one’s life by giving up your friends, plans or pursuits to spend time with your partner.
• No boundaries or limits on what you will put up with: putting up with too much.
• Evolve yourself around your partner, fitting in with them.

I’ve had remarkably few job interviews over my ~25 years of professional experience. I count 12 positions for 6 employers (2 nonprofit, 2 for profit, 1 government, 1 academic) with an average of 4.33 years at each organization between 1990 and 2016. For that, I’d estimate that I went through only 5 or 6 interview processes.

How’s that possible? Once I’m on board a job, I usually establish myself pretty quickly as a dedicated, hardworking employee. It’s been easy because I learned from my dad how to be a workaholic. I write that not even half-jokingly. The point is that many of my job moves have resulted from managers poaching me to bring me aboard their shop, former managers enticing me back, or managers moving to new organizations and then bringing me with them.

If that sounds like a humble brag, well, yeah, I guess it is. I’m proud that what I’ve accomplished at various jobs has been recognized as valuable and that managers want me on their teams. But there’s a downside to it. I’ve realized in recent years that I drifted from job to job with little consideration about what I wanted to do with my career, simply taking whatever offer came along because it usually meant more money and something new to work at (I can get bored easily in jobs). That alone felt like career planning and progression.

Looking back now, I don’t believe I even had an actual career until the early 00’s when I happened to fall into database development by complete accident. Prior to that, I just went with whatever job popped up without much thought to how it would fit into the big picture or what sort of career progression I envisioned.

If that isn’t “jumping into relationships too quickly before getting to know what the person [company] is like,” I don’t know what is.

I can think of two instances immediately when I “ignored the warning signs that something wasn’t right and didn’t listen to my gut.” There are probably others. But the first instance was when an IT director badmouthed a current employee during my interview with her. Still, I went along. On my first day, she took me out to lunch and proceeded to treat the waitress like crap. Those were red flags that I decided to ignore. That job lasted six months, which was three months too long: I should have left at the end of my 90-day probationary period. Easily the worst boss I’ve ever had, which is saying given than one of my bosses ended up in prison for stealing from a charity! Still, Steve was a far better boss that Kimberly. In fact, I’d go so far as to declare that the charity thief was a better human than the IT director.

The other instance was the time I found myself talking with my new boss a mere 10 minutes after arriving for this new job for which I’d relocated. Work hadn’t even started yet: this was a Sunday evening. And this guy took me aside and laid out a long list of reasons why the program was in serious trouble, issues that hadn’t been mentioned in the interview five days previously. Then, on my third day on the job, the rest of the employees voted to go on strike unless upper management made significant changes to the program and its oversight. I should have cut my loses, packed my bags, and boogied on out of town at that point. Again, that job lasted six months. I feel good about what I ended up accomplishing there, and even better about the good work that was done in the community as a result, but the pride is more about what we achieved despite all the odds and the obstacles put in our way. That’s no way to work.

I mentioned my propensity toward workaholism. Many people associate that with working long hours, and yes, that can be part of the issue and quite often is. But that’s not the core of the disease. No, it’s more that your life revolves around the job, such that problems at work mean problems in your overall life. You don’t leave the job behind: the job defines you and dominates your outlook on and interactions with the wider world. I remember asking for a one-month leave of absence after my dad died very suddenly back in 2013. I was dealing with the emotions around it but also found myself executor of an estate that was more complicated than it should have been owing to bad legal advice. Still, I could be counted on to work long hours seven days each week. And when my leave of absence request was denied because the bosses wanted me to step into a new project that was failing, I wasn’t upset: I was proud to once again be that fix-it guy.

Likewise, back in 2011 when my cousin was murdered, I was taking phone calls from fellow programmers advising them on how to handle projects. I took two phone calls from one programmer asking me to go over for the second or third time a simple issue: the first call was when I was panicking upon realizing that my suitcase zipper had just busted and the second was when I was in a cab on the way to the airport. In proceeding day, I got up early and stayed up late dialed into the company network before and after the first family get together, after the hours-long viewing, and again after the funeral. The following day, I flew back home and went straight back to work despite having some severe emotional issues that I should have been dealing with. It took months before I sought out therapy because I’d first sought refuge in the job.

If those aren’t classic examples of “giving up one’s life by giving up your friends, plans or pursuits to spend time with your partner,” I don’t know what is. And I believe both of those examples fall into the category of “No boundaries or limits on what you will put up with: putting up with too much.”

Finally, toward the end of my programming career, I realized that in each job I’d had, I had learned exactly what I needed to do exactly *that particular job* but little else. I didn’t keep up on new languages, concepts, or technology. I put on blinders and disregarded the bigger picture because I was so focused on doing my absolute best on whatever work was required at any given moment. That’s certainly an inclination toward “evolving yourself around your partner, fitting in with them.’

So yes, I am someone who jumps from one bad relationship to the next. I see it now. So the question is what I’m going to do about it, especially given that I am scheduling job interviews. I need to think on that question more, but I’ve already started on a list of questions I need to ask for one particular employer, and that’s new for me: I seldom ask many questions or take the opportunity to interview the company in the same way they’re interviewing me. I know I need to try to find any current or former employees to speak with or people who have worked in similar organizations, which in this particular case will be easy to do.

So I feel like I’m making progress, and that’s what my life recently has been about: examining, analyzing, making changes. Small but meaningful change is the path I’m on right now. Looking forward to the journey.