I learned something from Adam Savage at The Last H.O.P.E. Prior to the convention, I had no idea there was more to that saying.  Hearing Adam complete it made me feel so much better about being a Jack-of-all-trades myself.

Jack of all trades, master of none,
though ofttimes better than master of one.

But the more I think about it lately, the more I’m not so sure.

I’ve always been a bit scattered in my interests. I’ve loved technology, but also been an artist at heart. I’ve done desktop support, laptop / mobile user support, Windows Server support, datacenter application support, worked on UNIX server software/driver update projects, server retirement, and now SharePoint administration. I think I’d enjoy the Sharepoint work a bit more if the projects weren’t quite so far over my head and above my skill level.  I’m really more of an Admin, but lately have been put in a developer role when I’m far from a programmer or developer.

Meanwhile, I try to do what I can between working on the house and everyday chores to learn new things and practice “design”.  But I really feel like I need to narrow down what I want to focus on in that arena.  Seriously.  There’s so much that I want to learn that I think it’s distracting me from learning anything at all.

Do I learn Flash?  I’d love to! So many ideas what what I can do with that… But if I do, then I need to read up on ActionScript.  What about Illustrator?  Definitely. I want to learn as much as I can about Illustrator.  And Photoshop?  Of course!  You can never know too much or be too efficient in Photoshop – right?  Then there’s Dreamweaver.  Well, I do a lot of handcoding of HTML & CSS, so I use Dreamweaver primarily to speedup my coding & upload the files.  I’m sure I could utilize more of its features if I had the time to just do a little more research…

Java? AJAX? Ruby?  All sound like fun. Databases? Content management Systems? And which CMSs – WordPress, Drupal, Joomla? Then you get the requests for logo design, business cards, brochures, etc. In today’s market you can’t just do “front-end web design.”  You need to know all of this, plus print design.  And I want to learn it all! Now! I just think I need to make a decision, prioritize, and do one thing at a time. Otherwise, I fear that I will continue to chase myself in circles and not learn a thing.

Now – what to start with?

I’ve started reading up or stumbling onto more technical “blogs” and have toyed with the idea of moving to something more along those lines as I learn and find solutions to various problems. For now I think I’ll keep up what I’ve been doing and just categorize my entries and add technical posts as I have in the past. Probably “news”, “journal”, and “tech” for things like SharePoint, Powershell, and WordPress customization, etc. Maybe a “review” section for movie/game reviews? We’ll see.

The economy sucks, but we’re making our way through it without too much difficulty. So far. Steve found a new job that he loves. It has stability, is a bit of a challenge for him, and he loves it. I can’t help but feel a little jealousy, but that’s drastically outweighed by how happy I am that he’s finally found a job that he really loves with a great team of people.

One of my oldest friends relocated for a job about 2 years ago? They sold their house and moved everything 10+ hours from anyone they knew, bought a new house, etc. Only to be laid off due to the economy and budget cuts. It was a long search for a job even for someone as knowledgeable and talented as he is, but he finally found something. Congrats to him. Even though it’s a 6 month project, it must be quite the relief.

We had the pleasure of spending a bit of time with these friends over the holidays. The drive was long, but it was nice to get away for a bit. Oh, and there was Steak & Shake I took a number of photos (though not nearly as much as I probably should have). I’ve been hoping to upload those to my Flickr account soon. Keep an eye out for those.

Meanwhile, (back to the economy) my company has been laying off on average once each month since… June-ish? No layoffs in December though. I think we’re finally getting more projects, but they’re also giving away quite a bit of service for free as “value add”. This is both helping and hurting us I think.

I originally only took the job because it paid the bills. I didn’t want to get back into IT, but you need to eat, right? I’ve stayed because I love the people – though I still long for a career in something more creative. Now that probably 1/2 the employees are gone, there’s more fear about stability, and less reason for me to want to stay as my friends either leave or get let go.

In today’s economy, do you try to hold on to the job that you actually have, or actively look for something more “rewarding”?

The geek in me loves building VMs for Windows Servers to setup SharePoint environments and tinker with development. The artist in me wants to finally start my webcomic, do more illustration & graphic design, as well as finally build up a web design portfolio. Perhaps the combination of the two will help lead me into a career for branding SharePoint?

Until then, if you’re looking to see any of my previous Flash work, you can find them on my school portfolio site here. I’m not working as many evenings or weekends, so I hope to have a better portfolio online soon.

Wow. I knew I picked things up quickly (given that I was interested), but it’s hard to judge just how much until someone puts it in perspective for you. I think that made my day today.

People have left. People have been let go. On Thursday we were all on a “MANDATORY” conference call where we were yelled at for 45 minutes by our CEO for something that 90% of us had no idea what it was about. The structure is being rearranged pretty much weekly – yet it’s not being announced, so most people don’t know who they report to anymore. I think it’s only a matter of time before there’s a rash of more people leaving (perhaps myself included if I can get a portfolio together?). I love this company, but this environment isn’t very healthy at all.

The only time that I feel productive at work these days is when I’m scheduled to help upgrade UNIX servers (on the weekends). I normally prefer Saturdays so I can have a break before I start another work week, but that didn’t work out this week. I ended up working 14+ hours on Sunday, so now my schedule feels all messed up. It really feels like it should be much later in the week than “Tuesday”. Meanwhile I have to work through Friday, then hop on a train to NYC for the weekend, come back and work Monday & Tuesday, then fly out to the west coast. It’s going to be a very, very long week.

There’s a meeting (“luncheon”) scheduled for Thursday at work. Since I worked Sunday, for some reason I thought the meeting was today. Anyway… I was not invited to this meeting. The last time that happened, it was a way of figuring out who was being let go. I doubt that’s the case this time around. However, it’s still a little scary and it’s confusing how random the invite list appears to be. They left out something like 1/3 – 1/2 of the people who work in this office.

I had some strange dreams last night. One of them had to do with this luncheon but I forget the details now. Another dream that I remembered was just… weird. And surreal. I had a dream that I had suddenly received a lot of mail that I(?) had mailed myself years ago… and it had gotten caught up or stuck somewhere in the postal service until now. This was all like, old unopened junk mail from various accounts or magazines that I had signed up for – you know, those reminders to renew your subscription and stuff. There were also random things that could have all been part of a very large and detailed scrapbook – old notes to myself, to do lists, scraps of paper, etc. It looked like all of the junk that I would have normally thrown away over the years – all put neatly in large manila envelops. When I received all this mail, I was a bit freaked out. Like, why is this all arriving now? Where has it been all these years? And even better – I thought I had all this stuff with me still and I didn’t remember sending it to myself. But I didn’t want to throw it away because it was helping me remember people and events from my past.

Weird.