Got It!

 I had been told that I'd hear back about the job I interviewed for on Monday or Tuesday.

Monday and Tuesday passed with no word. 

I went to bed Tuesday night with the thought: "Wow, it's pretty bad when you're the only candidate interviewed and you STILL don't get the job!"

Wednesday I got the call: I got it! 

I'm excited. There's no change in level or pay, but it will be something different, something I have expertise with, and with a manager and team I'm thrilled to work with. Of course, our company moves leaders every two years or so, so the manager will probably get moved soon. I will be sad about that, but in the past it's worked well for my career progress. The one down side of this position is the possibility that I'll get pigeon-holed into it. I've been moved roughly every two years, which has been nice and good for my development. The person currently doing the job I'm getting has been doing it the entire seven years I've worked here. I am one of the only people in the company with the right technical expertise to do the work. That will make it hard for me to move, because the work is crucial to the company's mission, and if no one else can do it, then there'll be no chance for me to step out and someone else to step in. 

All that said, taking this job was a calculated risk. Right now I value stability and work-life balance above career progress. The job level I'm at is the start of the point where you need to be "on" 24/7. I check in on weekends some, but the need to spend a lot of weekend time on work is relatively low, so long as I manage my time effectively during the week. If I moved up a level, I'd be at the point where weekends, late nights, and early mornings are the norm. I'm not interested in that right now. The role I'm leaving had near zero weekends or late nights, but it was also not very stable. I'd been slowly engineering myself out of a job for much of this year by automating a lot of the work I was doing and building out clear processes and tools to allow someone of a lower job grade to do the work. I was going to need to pick up something different in 2021 or face the risk of job elimination. The likely things for me to pick up weren't of much interest. As I was writing this, my company announced mass layoffs in 2021. So hopefully this was the right move to make. I guess we'll see.