Of Montreal, and Plans to Come.
Tomorrow I leave Montreal and head back home to Atlanta. It’s going to be bitter-sweet. I am excited to be heading back home to Mary and the rest of my friends, but still unsure about what the future holds. Since I quit my job in December my plan has been to go to the lake and work on my idea (now KoppeMe.com) and just see what I could accomplish by myself. I was then to return to Atlanta and figure out a good time to come see Felipe in Montreal. That is as far as my planning went. I was open to see what would happen during this time, but noow these plans are finished. I haven’t really planned for what is next but will be doing so shortly.
I have accomplished several of my goals for this time off including, building a product that I will use and hopefully many others will find useful, learning a new programming language (Objective-C, iPhone programming), learned a little bit about myself and my work habits, learned more about running a startup and those people who are in the industry, and learned several new programming skills. I am proud of my accomplishments but not sure about where to proceed from here.
The past several months of freedom have been incredibly fun and I’m not sure I will have an opportunity to do this again. But I’m also not sure I want to do it again. When I started my first job, I remember thinking how nice it was that when I left work, I was done. It was so different from school, where when classes ended, or I finished a paper, there were still several other things that I *could* be doing to improve my grades. During school, even though it was the weekend, there was still work to be done before Monday’s classes. Where at work, when I left on Friday I didn’t really have to think about work until Monday. This time off has been more like the school schedule than the work schedule. I could work or not work any day I wanted to, but even though the weekend was here, there were still plenty of things that I could be doing to improve my site. Whenever I wouldn’t work I would end up feeling guilty for wasting time.
One thing that I have discovered is that I like working on interesting projects. I think that is why I became bored at my previous job. When I started I was part of a small team that our role in the company was important and our opinion in our area of expertise was valued. As time goes on and companies grow, it becomes more structured and more top down than bottom up in terms of planning and responsibility for work. I loved being in a small company where I knew people were counting on ME, not “that group that does that thing” to accomplish a task. There was a sense of personal responsibility for what needed to be done. I also got to be part of the decision making about what could be accomplished in a specified time frame. The hours were longer, the work was a bit more tedious but the reward of knowing that I personally impacted the product and my work could be seen was much more rewarding than working shorter, easier hours doing whatever was asked of me.
I think the same was what I found in my time off. I enjoyed working on new challenging things that I got to decide what I was going to work on. When I woke up, I got to work on whatever was sounding interesting to me at the time. There were of course days that “what sounded interesting” was plugging up all the boring bits that I had not tackled yet so that a final product could be completed.
So where to now. My current plan comes in four parts in order of focus.
1) Look for a job in a small company / startup in the Atlanta area where my expertise will be used, and my skills will be challenged.
2) Look for and work on contract work to bring in some additional income so I don’t have to run out and take the first job I find.
3) Begin working on an iPhone application
4) Continue improving KoppeMe to get it to a place that I could market it.
I’m still open to things changing, but you have to start somewhere or you’ll end up going nowhere.
