Creeva’s World 2.0

Pic­ture from here

Money isn’t every­thing.   We treat it like is though.   Some peo­ple can’t under­stand when I say I don’t nec­es­sar­ily want more though.   I of course do want more money, but at the same time I don’t.   What I truly want is more free­dom, more time, and more enjoy­ment from what I do.

I’ve had a cou­ple jobs that I enjoyed more then any­thing else.   The first was work­ing at a small PC shop.  It was my first break into the IT indus­try, in which I’ve done well climb­ing the lad­der.   I inter­acted with peo­ple, I was a prob­lem solver.  I was one of hte go to peo­ple that could fix almost any­thing.   I’m the type of guy that you throw prob­lems at and I’ll swat them away like annoy­ing insects.   It was my forte, the only thing I was really lack­ing at the time was high end net­work­ing.   I could make com­put­ers talk, but as I learned in my next favorite job I truly knew nothing.

The next job I can say now that I truly loved was work­ing at Symantec’s enter­prise fire­wall sup­port call cen­ter.   Like the small PC shop after a year or so I came into my own and had my own groove.   After three years being on the team I had closed more tick­ets then any­one else in level one and level two sup­port (I left being the team lead).    I also held the record for the most calls han­dled in one day.   The irony about hav­ing the most tick­ets closed is that 30–40% of the time I didn’t even open a ticket for the call.   Our call cen­ter soft­ware was so slow that it took 5–7 min­utes to actu­ally open and write up a ticket.  I made a deal with my man­agers (I’m sure some higher ups wouldn’t be happy) — that if I could han­dle the call in under five min­utes and be almost pos­i­tive that they wouldn’t be call­ing in on the same issue that I could just skip the ticket process.   So for vol­ume, by the time I left I han­dled far above and beyond what every­one else had ever han­dled.    Syman­tec has since dicon­tin­ued the prod­uct, it lasted about another year and half after I migrated into con­sult­ing that it went kaput.  I won­der if any­one caught up to me in the call record or num­ber of han­dled cases before it was gone.

This isn’t about brag­ging rights, I’m sure it sounds like it though.   What did both of these jobs have in com­mon though?  They were both hec­tic chicken run­ning with it’s head cut off prob­lem squash­ing affairs.   I work best where I have a new issue every fif­teen min­utes or a nag­ging issue that would keep me up at night try­ing to solve.   As you move up the lad­der you loose that.  You are work­ing on long and engag­ing projects where the prob­lem takes five min­utes to engi­neer, yet in turn takes six months to imple­ment.   I’m still good at what I do, but it’s not exactly the best fit for my skill set.   This in turn leads me into a spi­ral or more money ver­sus more enjoyment.

Me and my Grand­fa­ther (Not a Recent Picture)

I had a con­ver­sa­tion with my grand­fa­ther a few weeks ago, he told me how lucky it was that I had a job in today’s econ­omy (I am), and that it would be dif­fi­cult to move up in the area I lived.  I started to explain to him that I could more then likely find­ing a bet­ter pay­ing job, but it may not be as sta­ble in the long term as my cur­rent one.   I also said for the right job I would work for less then I cur­rently do.  Some­how in his mind that didn’t com­pute.   In an abstrac­tion of what he said, essen­tially he thought climb­ing the lad­der should be what is impor­tant.   I told him with the right job, I would take a 20% pay reduc­tion.  Granted that wasn’t my end goal, but for the right job in the right envi­ron­ment I would take my fam­ily down to the bare level where we could main­tain every­thing.   Why?  I would be happier.

We are taught early that you need to learn so you can bet­ter then“random exam­ple”.   So you can go to col­lege and main­tain that edge and not be a jan­i­tor.   So you can get the huge house and be bet­ter then your neigh­bors.   If you neigh­bor buys a Lexus you are taught that you should buy a BMW.  It’s a mad dash to prove that your bet­ter then every­one else.   To prove that cap­i­tal­ism runs the world.  If we are not work­ing to that we are either con­sid­ered un-American, stu­pid, or lazy.   Granted I am a bit lazy, but I can work.    I was born July 4, 1976 so I don’t con­sider myself un-American (I’m a Con­sti­tu­tion­al­ist).   I’m not stu­pid either.

I think this mind­set first hit my fam­ily when I wanted to go to col­lege for music per­for­mance and cre­ative writ­ing.   They always said I wouldn’t make any money with that.  I was sev­en­teen and brave enough to say that if I was happy I could be liv­ing on a street cor­ner in a box as long I was writ­ing and play­ing music.   They never under­stood that.  If I didn’t have my wife, and a love for elec­tron­ics (I didn’t have that love back then), I could prob­a­bly still do it.   My life hasn’t greatly changed at the core in the last decade though when I was first with my wife.   We live essen­tially the same way, we have a few nicer things, a house, a car pay­ment — but our basic lives are still the same.  I’d say the great­est dif­fer­ence is that we can not stand ham­burger helper any­more.   I still eat the occa­sional cheap ass boil it  ramen, and she enjoys Kraft Mac­a­roni and Cheese still.

Too many peo­ple in this world work for money.   Money is needed to sur­vive (I have a friend that would argue that), but at the same time it shouldn’t be your sin­gu­lar goal.   When I was younger I had a cer­tain goal finan­cially I wanted to make, I did through dif­fer­ent means.   I’m not at that level right now (I have no stock options to sell any­more), but it didn’t make it me any hap­pier.   These days I write more, I play in two bands, I’m learn­ing new instru­ments, and I have a baby that should arrive in the next cou­ple months.   I’m jug­gling the things that make me happy with work, what if I could be bliss­ful with my job too?  Some days I hate my job, most the time I’m just meh.   If I could get the hair pulling prob­lem solv­ing hec­tic life going again it would be great (must be my undi­ag­nosed ADD).  If I could do it at the same pay level or bet­ter, that would be awesome.

I really need to get some more recent pic­tures of myself