I normally avoid New Year’s resolutions.
In its current state, I am not sure the static landing page fully conveys what this site is about, but this post will cover that further. For starters, my resolution for the year is to get other work. Put more simply, another job, but technically it needn’t be a “job” in the traditional sense. For that matter, I fear between having “failed” by going out of business, having been a stay at home dad too long, and the economy generally, I may have no choice but to piece together a living – but more of one! – by going back into business, freelancing, ongoing part time employment, or whatever else I can do.
This site is about and meant to contribute toward that end. It is about me, professionally and to some degree personally. It’s bigger than a resume and smaller than a book, at least for a while. Not sure how it compares to a breadbox. It’s about my failures, triumphs, enthusiasms, apathies, past and prospective future.
Importantly, the inspiration here, it is about rebooting, about answering the question of how I might get back up to speed. Technically, yes, but otherwise as well.
It’s 2011! The last work I did for my former business was in 2007, not counting tax preparation and loose ends handled in 2008. And there’s a fuzzy thing… calling the business closed one year, but work being left to do into the next to make it so. But I digress, and even by the loosest measure, it’s coming up on three years. Four by the tightest.
Three plus years of getting further behind on technology, of getting more fully dislodged from the formula that equates recentness and quality of employment with employability and appropriate nature thereof. Compounded by having fallen behind already, having been bound too tightly to one large client more reliant on my deep knowledge of technology past and talent with virtual duct tape and baling wire than on keeping productively current.
That’s to the extent we’re talking about technology here.
So. Can I reboot, gain or regain technology or other skills, or find my way to valuable regardless? If so, how? In what field or capacity? Do I go entirely in the direction of my love of writing? Do I go with what I’ve done, but updated as possible? Do I take speaking geek and a management background of sort, and try harder to go that way?
Part of my problem has been the uncertainty. Every interview that results in nothing – or worse, is a disaster or generates amusement, every false start, every self-sabotage with a Doubt Club makes it worse. Once upon a time it seemed if I could get an interview, I could get a job. Getting them was hard, but once there… no problem. Now I seem incapable of interviewing well. Perhaps it’s my confidence that needs rebooting. It’s been seriously shaken over the past several years. I hope my posts here will help.
Ironically, the interview that knocked me down the most may have been about overconfidence. It was a no-brainer temporary tech support gig for an expected burst of extra calls during a rollout of new software. Just a couple months, but it would have been something, and would have rebuilt my confidence. A former colleague worked there and brought me to their attention, which I considered another reason I’d be walking right into it. It was also my first interview in many years. As such, I was nervous and inexperienced, along with being sure it just had to be mine for the taking.
I’ve had better and worse interviews since, but I’ve never regained that level of confidence.
In any event, that’ll do for a first post. I have plenty to say, but it can wait. That’s the idea… all the room in the world here.