Life. Work. Joy. The three shouldn't be mutually exclusive and the third should be omnipresent. Some seek a sharp divide between life and work and hope joy plays at least a small part in both.
Love what you do, and you will never work a day in your life.
Perks and challenges of being an introvert
Being an introvert does not have to mean living a hermit's life, though that is my tendency. I don't like big groups of people. Crowds don't make me nervous or scared; the din and sea of motion overwhelms my brain. Football games, concerts, and bars are great examples of places where I struggle. What may come across as shyness is probably just my flight instinct kicking in. Because I can't stop trying to focus on everything at once, I struggle to focus on anything at all. I can't understand the person talking right next to me and either nod my head wearing a goofy affirmative look on my face or wave them off with a look that says I can't hear you, which is frustrating for me and the person doing the talking.1
My hearing is fine, too fine at times. In a fairly quiet place my brain picks up the tiny sounds: bumps of someone moving around in adjacent rooms, beeps of random electronics, voices in other parts of the house. Televisions, like crowds, produce a constant flicker of motion. Even if I try to ignore it, the peripheral flashes of noise and sound are like a hynotic narcotic reducing me from creative worker to mindless consumer.
Does that mean I'm cranky when it's loud and cranky when it's nearly quiet? Mostly, yes. Am I sometimes hard to live with? Family members vote "yes." I'm glad we all love each other.
So far this sounds like a bleak existence, but I don't write off my challenges as complete flaws. Given the right environment, I can focus intently on the task at hand and churn out some great work.
Down to brass tacks
My ideal work environment is quiet and flicker-free. Music helps me focus, especially when wearing headphones. I prefer something with a bit of a drone and few to no lyrics. Aphex Twin fits the bill, providing everything from atmospheric soundscapes to intricate digital beats.2 Both have their own place depending on the work I am doing. What I struggle with now is trying to figure out what work I want to do.
My life was challenging from the ages of 17 to 25, that period when people are becoming who they will be. My dad died suddenly when I was in high school. I chose to be a young dad married (the first time) at 22. A poor sense of direction in my first year of college made the remainder more challenging. I shifted from engineering to English and spent much of my time after year one digging myself out of an academic hole. I had no direction, no distinct future in mind, and was just attending college because that's where I was supposed to be. Right?
After years of part-time courses and bumming around a series of low-skill jobs (waiting tables, washing cars, warehouse work, etc.) I landed a job writing for a weekly newspaper. After about seven years of journalism, much of it focused on writing about education, a public school superintendent offered me a job. Growing as a communications specialist helped me shed aspects of newspaper work I didn't like. Covering police and courts is a depressing beat for someone with no stomach for it. In this new role, I get to focus on telling stories, writing to bring clarity and a touch of style to the world of education in spite of its jargon and acronyms. My work also opened doors to discover areas I never knew I would love. Now, happily married (third time's the charm) with four kids and equipped with the budding wisdom of middle age, I am beginning to look at my options again.
Do we ever really figure out what we want to be when we grow up?
Everything comes with a price
With a broad job description, I have been able to define my role as as communications specialist with a focus on designing for print and the web. Like a twist in a fairy tale, my curse was working with the media.3. I can be happily chugging away on the web, working to build relationships through our sites, helping schools, promoting students, and tending to social media, when a discipline issue captures the media's attention and everything else screeches to a halt.
Nota bene: Like medicine and law, much of our work in education is confidential and protected by law. FERPA4 leads the charge in reasons we cannot tell all even when we want to, which leads to much frustrations on both sides of the street.
What now?
With time to focus and a renewed appreciation for clear design, I fell in love with structured text, the code underneath the spit and polish of the web that binds everything together. Code is an endless puzzle I find satisfying because it keeps me engaged as I continue to learn. I get to play5 with CSS, HTML, and a little javascript. Along the way I've picked up some perl and shell scripting skills and look forward to learning python and ruby.
I'm running out of steam on this topic, but I think it boils down to this:
- I want to continue working with Mac OS X and iOS.
- I want to teach people how to get the most out of their computers and mobile devices (which are converging quickly).
- I enjoy researching complex data sets, picking them apart and putting them back together in a way that makes sense to everyone who sees it.
- My beautiful wife (bless her heart) is the one who suffers the most from this aspect of my affliction. ↩
- As I write, I'm listening to Polynomial-C via Rdio. ↩
- Curse is a strong word, but I enjoy the metaphor. Most reporters I work with are good people; most of them. ↩
- FERPA is the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. ↩
- I chose the word "play," though I could just as easily have chosen "work." This is kind of the point I am trying to make. ↩