NOTE: This was written in 2006. I achieved 1.5 of the 3 items.
- I am working for a different company – 3 different companies counting acquisitions.
- I am working in the Pacific Northwest, just not in one of the major cities
- I am not living in Canada, but I can see it from my desk while I work.
Scott Berkun has an excellent essay on creative burnout.
For those of you who read this and may know me, this is a hard thing to accept. That I have gone so hatd at something for so long that it no longer excites me. Yes, there are elements of it that do motivate me, but the day-in, day-out work of taking apart companies’ Web performance data, answering the same questions, and hearing the same questions is no longer fun.
I used to live for this sort of thing. I would work from 06:00 – 00:00 because there were so many cool and interesting problems to solve. Now I heat those some questions and almost roll my eyes.
I have been immersed in this field for so long that I have lost a lot of my focus. But now I am asking questions that are the foundation of my life.
- Where do I want to be in 5 years? Short Answer: Working in Canada, consulting and speaking to an international audience on trends in Web performance from a technical and process standpoint
- Will I be working for the company I am working for now? Not likely.
- Where will I be living? At minimum in one of the Pacific Northwest’s triad (Vancouver/Victoria, Seattle or Portland). Preferably near but not in Victoria, where I can easily get flights to my gigs.
I have been thinking about this a lot lately, and thinking how much better I would feel being closer to home. I accepted this move as a way to get out of one backward, dead-end job, but I often find myself questioning if it was a good move, or simply one of convenience.
Last night, I updated my resume/CV. Tomorrow, I will transfer it to Word, Text and PDF formats. Time to hit the pavement again.