Training leads to career crossroads -- who knew?

Last week I went to a training class designed for Senior Consultants. Its the first training course of that type since I first started working back in 2000 with PwC and ASCENT. It was actually a lot of fun and pretty intense too. Needing to be in anywhere from 7a-8a EST and finishing up around 7p each night followed by evening events till 10p and then on some nights later evening outtings further out. Not to mention logging in every other night to keep abreast of real work which meant that on average I went to bed around 1230a-1a. It was also an incredible investment by Deloitte, because from the numbers I heard there were 26 partners and a bit more senior managers at the event pulled from their projects to serve as coachs and mentors - who would still log in every night after all the events to do client work.

The training class began with the Myers-Briggs assessment and emotional intelligence. Supposedly my type (INTJ) is predisposed towards CXO positions, whatever that means. Following that, we jumped right into building a proposal all the way up to the oral presentations. What I found is that I liked it. It has been a while since I've been doing that sort of thing (especially my rusty presentation skills). Whats more, is that I am good at this sort of thing. It is intuitive for me. Therein lies the problem.

I thought I had already made my peace with not making/trying for partner. I thought that I knew for sure I would stop traveling in 2-5 years. Maybe it is just a high from the training (I'll revisit how I feel in a week), but now I feel like I should reconsider....

But will it be worth it? Will I be willing to give up the work/life balance that I have always been striving to get? I don't know the answer to that. I will readily admit that the feeling is not as strong as it was immediately after getting home (15 hour travel time from Orlando with weather delays and idiotic United gate agents!! But thats another story). Something about having to deal with nitty gritty of real work life, which plays into the fact that I have always been more of the visionary type and not the down to earth type.

And to think that I thought I was done with the life-defining decisions, or at least career-defining decisions. To be continued....