I have just finished reading chapter 1 of 48 days and as promised i will be doing the assignments here for the world to see for accountability and content. 🙂

1, Ask yourself what work has meant so far: Looking back at all the jobs i have had over the years i think that everyone has started out as fun and challenging, like new content in ddo, then as i master the tasks i become tired and then ultimately i am grinding away for the end reward that is a paycheck.

2, What was i born to do: I saw this question when i was doing the overview on Friday and have been thinking on it all weekend. And i think the answer is story teller… Is that an option? Not a writer but someone that just tells stories. Think that is why i love pod casting or Dming or tring to stumble through this blog thing. I just want to tell stories and have people laugh or cry or anything really. On the other hand i am a natural Devil’s Advocate and/or teacher. Not real sure how those things go together…

3, Has my work and what i was born to do matched? Sometimes.. At my last place of work, as a web dev i often got to craft tools to do a task or allow others to manage a task. I see that as a way to tell a story every part order or warranty claim is like a mini-story… Designing a web tool for me is like building a quest or adventure, then allowing the user to complete the quest in the smoothest way possible. It takes research and planing and then the doing… I am good at the doing, but i enjoying the planing. Wonder if there is a planner job out there???

Eight more here stay with me.

1.1, My first job… The neighbors down the road gave me my first job, cleaning out their goat barn, think i made 20 or 30$…

1.2, What has been the greatest value or worth in my work life? If i am looking at financially i would have to say the system i put in place at Great Plains to handle parts orders. I know that they easily can handle 13 million in parts orders a day in part due to the ease of my part order system. If i am talking about to myself i think i would say the warranty claim system i built. There was no real frame work for that one, it was all in my head and i brought it to life totally by myself…. Is this what Jerry means when he says “system engineer”? I don’t know…

1.3, If you job changes does your purpose change? Yes, new challenges always allows new growth and purpose. Mountains must be climbed, right?

1.4, Will your current job exist 5 years from now? If by current you mean unemployed, then yes. If you mean web dev, then also yes. If anything more and more tasks will be moving to the web, just look at the US’ health care exchanges… Maybe that wasn’t a great example…

1.5, What are the ideal characteristics of a job/career? Challenge, Change, Quality People and measurable meaning. That last one is a little strange but in a nut shell i like being able to say i did this and it saves/makes X dollars a year or this saves person Y this much time per task… That is a great feeling.

1.6, When i daydream what am i doing? I dream about a lot of things. Right now i think my main fantasy is a small farm but that was when i felt oppressed or trapped at work. For the longest time i wanted nothing more then to work on DDo, not on its web site but on the game itself. Is it sad to say i want to fix bugs? Maybe i am just tired of so many bugs in my game? But if i could just do anything? I want to talk and just tell stories. Can you be a pro-Dm?

1.7, What are the happiest moments of my life? Okay lets start with the 2 clear winners, my wedding day and my son’s birth. Just thinking about how those days made me feel is making me tear up like a little bitch.. Stupid feeling. Those two days aside, i think taping a few of the DDoCocktailHours have been real highlights, the one and only live show i got to do on air was real fun even if my 3/4 dyslexia made repeating phone numbers real hard. But i also remember many late nights Dming at the pizza hut and the real joy i had watching Warranty Claims start to roll in when dealers could finally start to enter claims online. Those were all good days.

1.8, If nothing changed in my life in the next 5 years would that be okay? Hmm, no. Daddy needs a paycheck. Ask me that a week ago and i would have said sure, but meant mostly. The job was never my problem. Although i was a little behind on current skills but i was working on that. No my main issue was a boss that had decided and told me “you made my life hard for a while, now i am going to make your life hard.” I don’t want to get into that again but really all of my stress at work was due to him and my pay. Funny thing was when i got my last pre-firing paycheck i looked at the amount on the check and my bills and found a happy place with my salary…

That is all the questions for today. I think the idea was to get me to think about what overall makes me happy as a person and how i might take that and find something that calls to me?

Anyone out there that needs a storytelling programmer that is mostly is needed to plan things out or teach others things feel free to share this blog with the HR department.

As always,
❤