February 26, 2002

  • Busy.


    I got so bored doing nothing but writing boring old technical manuals and cracking the whip at work (I am a systems project manager if you care) that I started my own little marketing and design company. Once upon a time, before I got sidetracked into the world of C+++, Java, SmallTalk and SQL - I had a Graphics Design degree from a rather good art college in Canada. Oh and I also have an MA in English Lit, which seems to allow me to write scathing performance reviews and nice 'piss off' letters to clients when the project has gone (as all systems projects do) over time and over budget.


    And now this little company I started is actually making some money by just word of mouth. Holy shit. How odd to end up here.


    How on earth did I go from writing my thesis on Jane Austen and designing shaver ads to working in computers - as a project manager no less?


    Will it help if I tell you I also have my Canadian Stock Brokers license and have passed my bartenders course as well as have my Outward Bound Instructors course? And have a double BA in Philosophy as well as English? And got a shitload of badges in Brownies?


    Does anyone care?


    Here's my career timeline:


    Go to one university. Major in Politics. Hate it. Decide to be an artist. Get scholarship to Art College. Get 3/4 way through before my brain appears to rot from the inside out. Go back to university. Work my way through school as a bartender in a bar frequented by stockbrokers. Date a couple (nasty,nasty - I am not proud of this). Get offered a job. Decide I will always be poor unless I am not a stockbroker. Pass exam. Finish Art degree part time. Marry a computer nerd who works for a stockbrokerage (but he was cute on the outside anyway). Play Frogger. Decide I can do this. Decide chimpanzees can do this. Get Adult Teaching certificate so I can volunteer at a literacy program to salve my conscience.  Bluff my way into training and development department at stockbrokerage. Lie on visa to Australia. Get residency. Divorce first hub. Get job writing training manuals for small Aussie software company. Meet second hub. Realise that I am reprehensibly materialistic and need the finer things in life after being noble and walking away from first marriage without a penny. See management is where the money is. Bluff my way into first project management job. Suck up to clients who like me. Lots of clients like me.Get pregnant. Go to prestigious management consultancy who dump me when I tell them my kid comes first. So they lost $2300 a day billing - their loss. Get bored at home. Go back to small software company part time directing marketing and managing smallish (<$4million dollar projects). Feel my soul shrinking. Bluff my way into a design job. Work for clients who liked me when the projects I managed went hideously pear shaped cos I never lied to them. Do consultancy in my spare time when I am not working on boring ads for software company, designing web sites for insurance software and running a couple of web boards for over achieving and under achieiving mothers. Do marketing because I like manipulating thoughts and ideas into something visual and tangible.


    And here I am. A little bit of everything.


    So, anyone wanna talk Jane Austen and Walt Whitman??? I can feel my soul shrinking all over again.

Comments (5)

  • Call me a dipstick, but I care. I find it fascinating. Walt Whitman rules! I was born in his city, Camden, New Jersey.

  • My gosh, you've been busy. But I can relate, I've been feeling the urge to learn something new myself lately. I think it's all pretty fascinating and I think Leave of Grass is awesome, but prefer C. Bronte to Austen.

  • Bring on the Jane Austen.  I always wondered if I should have been born back then, anyway.  Yeah, English Majors rule, even if you have to sell your soul to actually get work when you're done discussing the Brontes, Austen, Henry Fielding, et al.  Let's chat.

  • That is quite a fascinating life chronology. Thanks for sharing. I like putting a real human life behind these words of yours I'm always reading. I'm a voyeur. I love to know things about people's lives... ;)

    We do something remotely similar. I edit and proofread technical books. I did a little bit of project management for a publisher (but probably very different from what you do). Yes, sitting around late at night reading about TCP/IP can make you want to implode with boredom. I know this, because I'm proofreading a book on that right now! Although, I have no technical skills, I just do the editorial stuff.

    I can't imagine going for a Master's. I'm so sick of school at this point. I hate academia. But I respect people who go to graduate school. I'll finally be graduating this May. Just two more months. You obviously have a lot of fortitude to do all the things you've done. I'm impressed. ;)

  • I shoulda married the guy who read leaves of grass to me...I named two kids after austen works...c'mon over here and lets get some use outa your bartending degree.

Comments are closed.

Post a Comment