However, regardless of what they answer, I listen more closely to how they answer. I find it interesting that I rarely get a response that indicates the person is excited or enthusiastic about what they do. So my follow up question eventually leads to, "What do you really want to do?". This line of questioning tells me what they're doing now of course but most people seem to not be doing what they'd love to be doing. I suppose to some degree, I may be no exception.
Don't get me wrong, I like what I do and if you ask me or any of the people I work with or used to work with what they would miss most about going to another job, I can almost guarantee they would tell you it would be the people they worked with. I have a great team that I have the pleasure of working with. Generally speaking we work great together, we support each other, we share each others loads & responsibilities, we communicate regularly via bi-weekly team meetings and daily via our Instant Messager and hosted conference room where we can all post questions and get immediate responses from everyone else on the team. There's also lots of playful banter even with the new people that have recently joined the team.
Yesterday marked my 8th year anniversary with Avaya. I'm in the same role now as I was when I started too. Part of me is ok with that only because other related groups that I might have had the opportunity to move to have had more layoffs than my group. I've had several co-workers move to other groups only to be eventually let go. So I guess I've remained because I do the job well and as such there's a level of expected security. As predicted, my 8th year anniversary came and went without anyone knowing besides my co-worker who sits next to me that I mentioned it to that it happened just as predicted. No recognition whatsoever.
But I digress, the point is that I too would be doing something different if I thought I could get paid anything close to what I'm making now. Because while I would love to "live the dream", I have a deeper rooted sense of responsibility to my family than to my dream job. I guess I actually have 2 different dream jobs I would enjoy.
The first dream job is one where I work for a company that offers goods & services for technical solutions to internal or external customers. My role would be to research new technology. When a request comes in for a technical solution, I would come back with solution A & solution B that meets their requests. A full solution would include cost breakdowns of time & materials, how long it would take to implement, what it would take to support & maintain, relevant dependancies, etc. Then I would work with a team of resources to implement the solution. Being paid to research and play with new technology sounds really fun to me.
The second dream job would be one where I get paid to do multimedia editing. I would like to be able to spend more time on audio & video editing (mostly video) but I have various obstacles. I really enjoy some of my so-called obstacles though like my family, vacationing, etc. One of my main obstacles is getting video to work with. This has 2 main sub obstacles in itself.
1. I don't particularly enjoy doing the filming most of the time. I don't have anything to film anyone would really find of much interest in the first place and my hand isn't the perfect camera stabilizer so there's too much shakiness in the videos.
2. Part of the reason I don't really enjoy filming is because the video camera I have now doesn't put out the video quality I want. I'm so used to viewing things in HD now that everything else looks grainy and if I can't produce something I can be proud to show others, I'd almost rather not to it at all. The video camera I have was bought this century and records on mini-DV tapes with a firewire port, can film decent in very low lighting with the built in filters, and can zoom in pretty far. But since I've been spoiled by HD quality tv & movies, the picture to me now looks almost like it's one step above the old reel-to-reel home movie films like they mimicked for the opening sequence for the Wonder Years tv show.
I do enjoy video editing and I've done some simple audio editing in conjunction with that to make audio tracks the exact right length or to make my own ringtones from .mp3 files. I just don't have a good source of video files to work with. I've tried all kinds of software packages that do video & DVD editing for creating my own fancy home movies. I haven't had much exposure to playing with these features on a Mac yet but that's on my wish list. Windows Movie Maker is suprisingly easy yet can have features flexible enough to make a decent video. See my Father's Day tribute. I've been trying to learn Adobe Premiere off & on over the last several years but it's got so many complex features that make it incredibly flexible, it comes with a huge learning curve. To make it a little easier on learning and the pocketbook, Adobe presented Premiere Elements which has all the most commonly used features an interested amateur hobbyist might use.
I know my wife has already said she'd be supportive of me switching careers. She said we'd find a way to make it work. That might mean moving to a smaller house and doing without some of the amenities we currently enjoy too. I know she'd even be willing to move out of state or possibly even out of country if needed. I think I'm holding myself back because of how it would negatively affect my family, the added stress it would bring to their lives and such. For me to do that just seems too selfish and I'm not sure I can bring myself to do it. Perhaps one day, maybe if I ever get laid off or whatever, who knows. Until then, it will be a minor hobby.
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