August Reflection
Half of the team is on vacation in August. Scratch that – I mean half the town. Thinking about Boston, my morning commute is uncharacteristic of rush hour traffic. People wear slacks to shorts to work; the sun is slow, and most of all, it’s empty.
Once I get into work, the office is quiet. People aren’t around – they’re all using their vacation time now – so it becomes difficult to track the people you need to get your work done. So while you’re in the office, it becomes a struggle to be productive.
This actually falls at a very convenient time for me because it gives me time to familiarize myself with our product. I can read through the documentation, install it and run into issues on my own. I can use it, test it, and report any problems I see.
It’s easy to ease myself into this job because of how relaxed work is. Everybody’s happy so you get to see the real bright side of people – not the busy, stressful sides. This is a great time to network and go to patios and do lunches and learn about them.
Aside from that, I’m also beginning to think about my career path. I’m not quite sure what road to take, but a few nights ago my goal become clear to me: to become a key contributor. It is my next life milestone. I’ve had several in the past.
First was to get my lifeguard license. After that, it was to get into Computer Science co-op at UW. While in UW, the next milestone was to get into IBM or Microsoft (yes, can you believe I managed to achieve it?).
Now my next goal is to be make a difference. It is to do something that bears weight in this world – something with value. And a way I can do that is to become a contributor. I want to help people, work with people and be able to contribute my ideas and see them propagate out to others.
That’s my idealistic next goal. To be able to say I made an impact on this world and did something real, that’s what fulfillment I seek.
So I’m really looking forward to setting the goals and taking the next steps to achieving that. Life is a game of competition and improvement and I love working on it everyday. Even on Saturday.