Is it so much to ask?

It's come down to my job and my girlfriend. I love both in entirely different, but wholly influential ways.

In the course of the nine months or so that I've worked for the Virginia Museum of Transportation, I've concluded that I will never have another job that challenges and rewards me in the ways that this one does. Other jobs may pay better and offer better benefits; any of the current VMT staff will tell you that's almost a certainty, shy of working as a chimney sweep in Dickensian London. There is no other job that will provide the same daily array of unique, difference-making opportunities, nor afford the same flexibility to do five different jobs without being distinctly qualified for more than three of them.

My girlfriend is a once-in-a-lifetime find, though. As incredible as my job is, what's even more incredible is having someone in my life to share my experiences with, and who actually seems to give a damn, for reasons passing understanding.

We've been talking about moving in together (in Northern Virginia), marriage, and children. While I've had those conversations with previous girlfriends, this is the first time I didn't feel at all nervous about any of those possibilities. Likewise, I don't feel like I'm not ready for any of them. I just don't know if I'm ready to give up the best job I'll ever have just yet.

City of Roanoke, I pose the question: Why doesn't your job market have room for a qualified financial systems specialist with better than three years of in-depth experience? If there were a job opening for her that offered even a comparable (not even better, but just roughly equivalent) compensation and benefits package, she would take it before she finished reading it.

It'd make my life easier, that's for sure.