Exploring a Career Change

September 10, 2009, a Thursday evening.

For the last several years I've worked on the web in various capacities and just recently began asking myself what it is I enjoy about it. I don't have an answer yet.

To help figure it out I've started taking a personal inventory. These are some things I currently enjoy or have enjoyed doing in any capacity. I'm an INTJ if that helps explain things.

• Chopping down trees with friends and loading them onto flatbed trucks
• Shoveling snow
• Bicycling
• Running/hiking on trails
• Driving power boats
• Tying ropes securely around boating cleats
• Ultimate frisbee or just throwing a frisbee
• Soccer
• Writing music
• Using digital recording equipment
• Using digital instruments and effects
• Making sound with Max/MSP
• Watching movies over and over again
• Stewarding counselors and campers at Fish Camp as a co-chairperson
• Space Camp
• Mountain biking
• Climbing
• Guitar
• Drums
• Singing
• Acting
• Making people laugh
• Loading a car/truck/moving van just so
• Making web sites run faster
• Watching things automate
• Playing strategy games
• Making contraptions
• Playing good, smart pranks that make people smile
• Giving good advice
• Sharing wisdom in situations
• Seeing the big picture/pattern
• Making movies
• Writing words
• Playing with my son
• Model trains, planes, automobiles, and rockets
• Flying
• Starting my own business
• Working with smart, motivated people at Startup Weekend (twice now)
• Cocktails, beer, and wine, in any order
• Good conversation with a small group of people
• Learning
• Eating pizza
• Installing ceiling fans
• Reading
• Keeping up on the latest tech/web trends
• Cleaning/wiping computers and re-installing software (call me crazy)
• Laughing at good jokes/stories that have nothing to do with crude or offensive humor (two great examples are Bill Cosby and Sinbad)
• Talking to smart people
• Talking to passionate people
• Talking to funny people
• Ken Robinson is all three of the above (I watch this talk several times a year)
• In the movie of my life that plays in my head from time to time, I am Chevy Chase as Fletch
• Taking photographs
• Thinking for long periods of time
• Taking it all in
• Doing just about anything with my wife, who is a rock star