Tag: Change

2022 Week 23 – Change is Fun!

This is going to be a short catch-up post this week. Lots of new things going on with the new job, and the first week flew by. It’s been fun to immerse myself in a new type of work and the new terminology, acronyms, and challenges.

From an organizational standpoint, I decided, once again, to separate my personal and professional life. I had ended up merging the two recently with the adoption of Apple Reminders, but with all the new inputs and things to track with the new job, I decided to dust off ToDoist and give it another go, but only for work items. So I’m keeping my personal task list in Apple Reminders for the time being. It’s nice not to see personal items at work and vice-versa & it’s bringing some clarity I have not had for a while.

For the time being, project management will continue to occur in Evernote. It’s my tried-and-true capture tool with the ability to track projects at a granular level. I was happy to see that ToDoist has some basic project management capabilities in the form of Boards similar to Trello. I can see this being useful for future, more in-depth projects. It’s matured quite a bit since I stopped using it a couple of years ago.

That’s it for this week. I’ve had a few road trips and checked out some new restaurants this month, so those will be the subject of future blog posts as I get caught up and back into a rhythm. Stay Tuned!

2022 Week 22 – It’s Been Fun!

So I retired from the IT world last week. It’s been a while in the making but after 25+ years, 18 as a consultant, it was time to hang up the keyboard. Will I miss it? Maybe. Am I glad I made the decision? Absolutely! Now I’m not old enough to actually retire. I have a few more years ahead of me before I do that, but I have an opportunity to try something else and help make a difference in people’s lives while I can.

The departure from my last employer was positive and I enjoyed my time there. I learned a lot and will value the relationships I made, and the projects I worked on over the years. They have great leadership, supportive management, and smart, dedicated employees. I have nothing but great things to say.

COVID played a big part in this decision as my role at my primary client was changing to provide more than just IT consulting services. I became wrapped up in a lot of Operations type tasks and really got into it (whatever it takes to get the job done is my motto). I liked it so much that I decided I wanted to move into Operations full time, and they had an opening available.

What exactly is Operations? Well, it’s a little bit of everything, and most of it is behind the scenes. Operations are the heart of any organization and assist with employee retention, policies and procedures, vendor management, and so on. In a way, it’s like consulting because you never know what you’re going to be challenged with next. I’m sure my technical background will come in handy as we look to use technology to streamline processes and improve efficiencies throughout the organization.

If you’ve been thinking about a career change, Forbes had a great article called How To Reinvent Your Career At Any Age. It has some great tips to get you started. It helped me realize you’re never too old to make a big change!

I’m planning to continue posting weekly updates on the blog. I can’t walk away from tech completely so I’m sure I’ll still be reviewing interesting products along the way. There is always food and travel to blog about too so I see this site continuing to be active for the foreseeable future.