MY Career
People ask Eric, "so what do you do?" Apparantly his job is officially 'cool' since they listen with interest, asking specific questions and trying to learn more. My opinion? It's easy enough to explain the career track of Software Architect to people while holding some mystical glamour.
They turn to me. "What do you do?" Mere seconds go by before the eyes glaze, and often as not, interrupted to change the subject. People just don't GET what I do.
So thankfully, the Rapid eLearning Blog explains it well what I do. Or at least explains a huge component of my job. I also train, evaluate and schedule faculty, but course development and evaluation is my focus and love.
Check out the well written blog post that describes perfectly my true career.
24 July 2008
Working at Home
People often think that working at home is the dream come true. I thought that when I designed my life and goals to be able to work from home if I wanted to work. However, that office environment has it's own special challenges that have to be addressed in order to stay sane.
One of my favourite bloggers, Dumb Little Man, found another blogger (jeetblog) that explains it well with this post.
People often think that working at home is the dream come true. I thought that when I designed my life and goals to be able to work from home if I wanted to work. However, that office environment has it's own special challenges that have to be addressed in order to stay sane.
One of my favourite bloggers, Dumb Little Man, found another blogger (jeetblog) that explains it well with this post.
21 July 2008
Life Management
Referring to the blog post yesterday in Obligations, I am happy to report that I acted on my acknowledgement.
I dropped a somewhat large hobby that had ballooned into an obligation.
I feel guilty and like I let people down, but I'm also wondering if that isn't just extreme arrogance on my part that I could possibly have that much effect on people. Regardless, I will suffer some depression this week for cutting that aspect out of my life, yet I feel a wave of absolute relief: one less thing to think about.
That just leaves me with
Referring to the blog post yesterday in Obligations, I am happy to report that I acted on my acknowledgement.
I dropped a somewhat large hobby that had ballooned into an obligation.
I feel guilty and like I let people down, but I'm also wondering if that isn't just extreme arrogance on my part that I could possibly have that much effect on people. Regardless, I will suffer some depression this week for cutting that aspect out of my life, yet I feel a wave of absolute relief: one less thing to think about.
That just leaves me with
- raising a toddler
- running an university's online program
- running a non-profit inner-city martial arts school
- maintaining a social life
- prepping and starting a doctoral program
Considering that list was much longer just six months ago, I'm extremely proud of myself for finding out what keeps me going and what keeps me happy. I always felt like I was being selfish if I just dropped aspects of my life, but I'm learning that being unhappy makes me irritable and unproductive overall, where I'm getting to the point that being happy makes me far more easy going and productive with fewer things.
20 July 2008
Obligation
I am unhappily discovering that a lot of my activities revolve around obligation, not enjoyment. That is not a suggestion that everything in life is one big happy circus, but these particular obligations started out as hobbies or fun activities, and now they are somehow integrated into a big responsibility package minus the smiles and sense of enjoyment.
Although this is very generalised statement that does not impact everybody, Americans seem to suffer from the "fun isn't really fun" issue. As I circle around and look at others, I see them stressing out over their obligation to something that was pure fun six months previously. I pitied them and said that I would never do that. HELLO! It's like a drug habit for me.
These are the stages as I look back on hobbies that have turned into obligations.
I am unhappily discovering that a lot of my activities revolve around obligation, not enjoyment. That is not a suggestion that everything in life is one big happy circus, but these particular obligations started out as hobbies or fun activities, and now they are somehow integrated into a big responsibility package minus the smiles and sense of enjoyment.
Although this is very generalised statement that does not impact everybody, Americans seem to suffer from the "fun isn't really fun" issue. As I circle around and look at others, I see them stressing out over their obligation to something that was pure fun six months previously. I pitied them and said that I would never do that. HELLO! It's like a drug habit for me.
These are the stages as I look back on hobbies that have turned into obligations.
- This is so much fun! I love it!
- Cool.
- *sigh* Busy, but I'll make it work.
- Christ, why did I do this?
- It's OK. Really. I'm just too busy at the moment.
- I hate this! I should quit, but other people are relying on me and I really do enjoy it and I don't want to cut myself off from the possibility of getting 5 minutes of excitement out of it, so I'll continue to invest hours for every 5 minutes of enjoyment since I've made an commitment and I shouldn't be a quitter.
Well, those are at least my stages. The problem with stages 1-5 is that I'm constantly convincing myself that the rest of life will change to make the hobby more interesting, and by the time I get to 6, I feel so guilty, stupid, and committed that I just blindly continue.
There, I acknowledged it.
12 July 2008
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