Tag: job

Some time with the wife

On By JamisonIn General, Share-topia 20183 Comments

One of my favorite things that has happened this year is that I’ve gotten to spend a lot more time running with my wife. Part way through the year I decided to spend some of my training run time with her, despite the fact that her pace is quite a bit slower than mine. This has had a couple of really positive effects. The first is that I’ve stayed much healthier this year, with almost no injuries or “niggles” to speak of. Secondly, it means we’ve gotten to spend a lot more time together.

One of the benefits of this is that we have some really great conversations. Sometimes we hash out difficult issues that we need to work through. Sometimes we talk of nothing of substance. Then there are nights like tonight where we work through big mental hurdles that are causing one of us issues. For me, tonight, this was about my job and career (duh, of course it was).

I had already had a conversation with my friend Michael over lunch, and it spawned into a much deeper dive with my wife on our run. We really dug in to some of the core issues that I’m feeling about what I’m doing day in and day out. What really triggered an epiphany for me was realizing that I need to come home from work feeling like I actually did something. When you’re a manager, often your day is filled with keeping the team on task, putting out fires, acting as an intermediary, and so on. I’m not getting to scratch my itch to actually accomplish something, and feel like I’ve done something fulfilling in my day.

In practical terms, what this means is that I need to stop thinking that the typical career path of climbing the organizational ladder is where I should be headed. Part of the reason that I got out of the Enterprise Architecture business was because I thought I needed to move into higher level roles, and I was told quite directly that I needed to show more people leading experience on my resume. That spurred me to move in to management, and as much as I like developing people, I really want to be a leader more than a manager. I want to get back to getting my hands a little bit dirtier than they get now, and end my day feeling like I accomplished something worthwhile.

Therefore, my new focus is going to be to start looking for something that’s more hands-on, and has more of a creative and deliverable outcome to it. It might be back in the architecture world, or it might be something different. However, it’s incredibly freeing to have a direction to point towards.

I’m glad I ran with my wife tonight.

Some things never change

On By JamisonIn General, Share-topia 20181 Comment

Today on Facebook it kindly reminded me of memories from years gone by (as it does every day). Sometimes I’ll click past the first one it shows me and scroll down the page to see what else happened.

fbmemory

That’s right. I’ve been in career/job/life angst for 10 solid years now. It’s a bit of a slap in the face to realize that I’ve been struggling with this for a solid decade. You’d think that, by now, I’d have something figured out. Granted this specific post was more about money than career angst (I don’t think I was that disenchanted quite yet), but it was probably the start.

As I’ve thought more on my history, my happiest times were actually back just before this post. It was around this time that I moved into higher level roles, and started taking my hands off the keyboard a lot more. Since 2011 I haven’t done any real hands-on engineering work for my career. Part of the reason for that was that I was getting older and not keeping up with all the newest and greatest tech out there. I’m sure the fact that I spent so much of the time between 2002-2008 going to Seminary to train to be a pastor, didn’t help either.

Anyway, that’s an aside. The point of this post is that it’s been 10 years of trying to figure myself out. Knowing that fact makes me even more determined to make something positive happen now. Still not sure what it will be, but the motivation is getting stronger to end the cycle, while at the same time accepting of what may be the final answer, even if it’s not the dream I had thought of.

Moving on up… to Capitol hill

On By JamisonIn General, Share-topia 20181 Comment

For the past three years I’ve worked at the Metropolitan Council. This is a regional (seven county) governmental organization that manages the area’s public transit, wastewater treatment, housing development, park planning, and other regional needs. I have been an IT Manager there running large scale infrastructure.

Tomorrow, I start a new job, at the Minnesota Judicial Center (Supreme Court) of Minnesota. I’ll still be an IT Manager over there, but I’ll be managing a much smaller team than I was last week. I was previously managing 13 different engineers, and in my new position I’ll be managing 4. That will hopefully remove a lot of stress from my life, which is a good thing right now.

My previous boss is a great guy, but he was concerned that I wasn’t advancing my career much with this move. He firmly believes I should be trying for Director and CIO level positions. However, I feel like I have a lot of things in my life, and my job is just one of them. I’d rather be less stressed at work if it means that I can handle the rest of my life easier. I’ll accept that, perhaps, that’s the cost of not moving myself into higher level positions that I know I’m capable of.

Tomorrow starts one of many new adventures coming up this summer. For all my Saint Paul friends, I’ll still be around, just up on Capitol Hill instead of downtown. I’ll still be visiting all my old haunts, just not wandering the skyways quite as much.

Onward to new experiences!