New Directions

I've been in IT for quite a while.  It wears on me like sand on beach glass; I'm more likely to attract necklace-making hippies, but I'm also ground down, dull around the edges and lacking lustre.  For a long time now, the best part of my day has been the bike ride at either end of it.  This is a bad thing.  Don't get me wrong, I don't expect that I'll ever jump out of bed, yelling "F*** YEAH!  Time for work!", but it would be great if I felt some [any] desire to go into the office.  Being a contractor is good because the longest my current contract will go for is to some time in July - I can move on to something else after that.  But what?


I've recently engaged the services of AveNew Career Consulting.  They help lost souls like myself find the path to less-sucky jobs.  So far, I've had an initial interview, done 4 online assessments [interest surveys, Meyers-Briggs, etc.] and reviewed 2 of the interest surveys with the consultant.  The results are pretty interesting.  The things I like to do are largely focused on the creative side of things, especially visual arts, culinary arts and writing.  After that, it's a toss-up between social interests [working with and helping people] and management stuff [leading teams].  At the absolute bottom of my interests were mathematics, chemistry and computer science [-50 score on one survey]. 

One thing that surprised me was that "Realistic" jobs ranked pretty low on the list.  These are jobs/careers that involve very hands-on and/or outdoor work, like carpenters, mechanics, landscapers, wildlife bilogists, etc.  I really enjoy working on those types of things.  I fiddle with the car, I work on the bikes pretty much constantly, I like gardening and then there's the whole trail-building thing.  It may just be that I should keep doing that stuff, but that I shouldn't make a career out of it.

I've made a lot of good friends in IT, but my liver has suffered for it.  That whole time at the 'bu was pretty brutal.  Lots of commiseration, not much celebration...