Well, summer is over, and I realize that I’ve not written a word here for months. I’ve not been idle for those months, but everything I’ve been working on has been in a state of flux. In other words: nothing worth writing about. A large portion of my time has been given over to volunteer work, and more time yet hanging out with the family. And, of course, throughout it all I’ve been pondering my future. In my last post I’d just been laid off – along with a few other people – and was really trying to decide what I wanted to do. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to continue in my chosen profession, or if I wanted to take a run at making a living as a photographer of some sort.

I won’t recap the whole post here – you can scroll down and read it if you like – but to cover the highlights, I’d realized how being laid off was as much of a blessing as a curse in many ways. I’d not enjoyed my job for some time and felt like continuing with what I’d been doing may yield the same result. I was researching ways to move into photography.

Well, several months have passed, and I’ve really had a chance to decompress a bit to step back and look at things with a fresh eye, and my conclusions are different now than they were then. During those months I’ve come to realize that my earlier concerns about continuing the career path I’ve worked so long on really weren’t that at all. See, my last job was with a great company, with a great product – one which I could get very excited about – and a lot of potential. And, while all of that may seem ideal – as it should have been – the reality is that none of those things really mattered. They didn’t matter because we were lacking a key ingredient: customers. Well, more specifically, sales prospects. As a result, my job evolved into driving two to three hours a day (round-trip) to an office where most days duties could be summed up as simply “look busy”. And anyone who knows me knows that I can’t stand the monotony of trying to look busy 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Difficult problems that make me want to pull my hair out? Great! Insane hours on a tough deadline? Bring it on! Last minute emergency runs to the airport to put out a fire somewhere? Fantastic! Agonizing over every word of speech to make sure I am conveying exactly the message I want to? Sweet! All of things are what make going to work interesting. Sitting at a desk for seemingly countless hours trying to figure out how to keep from nodding off? Um, no.

But that is exactly where I found myself the majority of the last several months at my last job. Ironically, I’d gotten burned out not from too much work, but from a lack of it. And that really colored my opinions at the time of my last post. And so, as I contemplated and researched various inroads into the photography business I found myself wondering if turning a very fun hobby into a career was smart. Don’t get me wrong, I think it would be a viable business still – at least if the economy picks up a little – but would having to shoot specific places repeatedly, and on a fixed schedule, suck all the joy out of taking pictures? Perhaps. But, more importantly, I began to realize that I really did still love the jobs I’ve already had. Once I got some distance from the office dronery I’d found myself in, the fog began to lift. I think it is a bit like getting out of a relationship that was bad, and that had been that way for some time; you just really aren’t interested in dating for a while, ya know? And I had that epiphany as I tore apart and rebuilt my network three times in as many months. Nothing was wrong with it, mind you, I just decided to flatten it out some and drop a switch or two. Then I decided that putting my IPS in a different place might yield more interesting information. Then I realized I was having a blast… hmmm…

That was about two weeks ago. I started putting out calls to a few recruiters to see what was cooking in the industry with the economy like it is, and found that there were jobs out there, just not as many and not as often. I told them to keep me in mind if anything interesting crossed their desk. Late that week I got an unsolicited call from a recruiter I’d never talked to – but with a firm that I had – that sounded more like an exploratory call in the message. When I returned her call I was shocked as she described a job that sounded to me as though it were written specifically to match my resume. I forwarded her my current resume, and we chatted again. She sent it to the powers that be at the company she was representing, and the very next day I had a phone interview with the guy who would be my boss were I hired. He seemed to be a really nice – and very bright – guy and I believe it went pretty well. There were some areas he asked me about that I wasn’t as up to speed as I wish I were, but they were both questions I could ramp up on very quickly. More importantly, they weren’t things I claimed to know on my resume. In fact, I’d not even made mention of either of the topics, in spite of the slight involvement I’d had with each of them a few years back. I was thanking God that I don’t pad my resume. That would have been awkward. In any case, I think the call went pretty well overall, and I find myself suddenly itching to get back in the saddle and leave the last job behind. It is WAY too early in the process to make any predictions about how this will turn out, but I’m feeling pretty good about my chances so far.

I guess the bottom line of this rambling post is this: Since my last post, I’ve gone from wondering what I wanted to do, to realizing I wanted to do just what I’ve always done. Seems like that should have been obvious to me, yes? And I’m talking to a company that intrigues me greatly. Oh, and as an added bonus I happened to have lunch scheduled on Friday with an old colleague of mine who is one of the best sales guys I’ve ever known. I discovered at lunch that he was looking to make a move and I’d already learned the company I was talking to was looking for a sales guy. Oh, and they are in almost the exact same market space as I was in when I worked with this guy. Together, we’d pulled in over 12 million in sales from a major carrier, with another 7 million in maintenance over the next three years. Not bad for a two man team. And now I am facing the prospect that we might be able to put the team back together. I hope to have another interview this week. Keeping my fingers crossed that they are everything they seem to be, and that they decide that I am as well. It would be nice to get back in front of customers and get back in up to my elbows in something technical and hopefully difficult. THAT would make me a happy camper. Keep your fingers crossed. I know I am!

/g