October 22, 2010 – 12:27 pm
I'm finishing up my first week at my new job. It's been pretty overwhelming tyring to grasp the enormity of a new hospital system, and trying to figure out my role here. But as I wander the halls and get lost in its far reaches, I remember that I grew up in places like this. (more…)
My new (used) French press
I'm settling into my new job, everything about it has gone about as well as I could have hoped. My coworkers seem cool, I understand the work, and for once I am not being pulled in 9 different directions. I know what I am supposed to do and I am given the time to do it. which is nice, and possibly the norm in the working world. I understand some job require multitasking, but I'm starting to think my old job was less a case of 'handling multiple projects in multiple disciplines' and more 'one guy doing the job of several people.'
The only real downside has been the commute. (more…)
An update on my professional life: I am back in the world of compensated service providers. So far the transition from couch to rolly office chair has been pretty smooth, though I think they've been going easy on me. The tough work is yet to come, but I think I can handle it. I'm back to managing web content, which in of itself is not too difficult to grasp. Where the expertise comes in is knowing how to use the application itself. Lucky for me, I was reared on this particular CMS, so I am familiar with a lot of its eccentricities. Ever notice how we sometimes treat software like moody, potentially-unstable people? This program is known for being grumpy, making content disappear just long enough for you to really freak out, only to bring it back when you've broken down and begged for help from a superior. But since I remember this sort of thing happening all the time in the olden days, it doesn't faze me like it normally would.
I am still getting used to the main disadvantage of this job: it's way far from my house. The Upper East Side/Yorkville is really foreign to me, having never had a reason to come up this far before. But thanks to express trains it hasn't taken much longer to get here. My recent rediscovery of our local library means I am occupied for the trip. And dare I say, this is all a lot more productive than what I've been doing lately, watching Martha Stewart quietly disparage minor celebrities while making seasonal crafts. Oh I've learned a lot from Martha, but it's probably time to field some other lessons.
The last couple of weeks took an extra helping of crazy, all of it a logical result of several things I set in motion recently. Briefly, after a recent drought, I suddenly had more work than I knew what to do with, between freelance, temp and contract jobs. I'm still in the midst of this, though much of that smoke has now cleared. But it has been amazing to me how greatly changed my life has become so quickly. Other things remain squarely in familiar territory. (more…)
December 15, 2009 – 4:06 pm
Looking for some hot stuff
I continue to make edits to the site, so if anybody's watching you will see the site odlly from one moment to the next. Some might say it is unprofessional to make changes to a live site, but I'm not too worried about tons of people continually reloading this site every minute of the day.
After spending a lot of time coming up with a script that would take all my blog categories and dump them into a simple drop-down menu (as opposed to the default setting, which just lists them out ad infinitum), I discovered WordPress has some very simple code to do this, which is what you see on the sidebar now. While it is important to know how to do stuff on the web, sometimes it's more important to know when to stop and say "Hey somebody already did the work for me." This is the soul of being a project manager, which is apparently what I'm shooting for on the job scene.
Speaking of which, I finally have a preliminary draft of my resume, so without further ado I guess I'm officially looking for work now. I say I'm looking for project manager work, but that sounds loftier than what I really want to do, which is tinker around with web programming and design elements, while getting some leeway to call the shots. In essence, choosing "Project Manager" is the moral equivalent of calling someone a "Jack of all trades," while pushing aside the qualifier of "Master of none." So I say "Project Manager" if only to avoid saying "I'm not good enough at any one thing to make a living, so please give me the job whose major facet is getting heaped with all the blame when things go wrong."
My old job paid for career services, which have been a big help for the resume, but now I'm thinking I should see if they have courses on improving my attitude.
