Oct 06 2010
In other news…
This past year, some big things have happened for me. First, I changed jobs…sort of. I still work in the same company, but I’ve moved from being a Technical Trainer with the Tech Support department, to being a ‘System Engineer’ in the Release Management1 team. This means I help shepherd software from the developers out to all the servers and workstations in our little world.
It’s a marked change for me…for about 20 years now2, I’ve worked in some form of tech support. Even up to the last 8 years as a trainer. I wasn’t always on the front lines, but I was always there, fighting to make Windows PCs work for users who’d rather be doing something other than fighting with their PCs. Now, I’m doing a variety of things: installing services and daemons on UNIX servers, packaging and deploying windows software, and on and on.
I’ve been working so hard to reach a point where I felt like I was accomplishing something on more than just a person-by-person basis. In Training, I felt I was going to reach that point…but I didn’t. Lots of reasons, and I might do a post-mortem some time, but not now. Suffice it to say, I need to grow. I needed a change. My new job is fantastic. I feel like I’m barely keeping my head above water some days, but on others I do feel occasional bursts of brilliance.
Sometimes, when you’re in a comfortable little groove, you forget how exciting and thrilling leaving that groove and striking out in a new direction can be.
