Getting paid to have fun
So what’s being going on in my life, except for the whole newborn baby thing? A new job, that’s what. Two weeks ago I started work as the newest member of UNC-Chapel Hill’s University Library web team. Although this job move meant giving up my corner office (and its glorious floor to ceiling windows) in the Undergraduate Library for a cube in a windowless room in Davis, it’s been lots of fun. It’s just so great to have a job where I can actually apply the knowledge I’ve gotten from reading tons of programming and web design books. So far I’ve gotten to get into the CSS and jsp code for an upcoming catalog design (IE6, we hates you), had serious chunks of time to work on the reserves website that’s been languishing in my todo list for over a year, have been encouraged to explore an interesting project idea, and have had lots of collaborative fun with Nivex.
Today I also had the brand new pleasure of working an entire day from home. I’ve just never had a job that didn’t require me to be physically present. I gotta say, it was pretty enjoyable and genuinely productive. I wasn’t sure how well it would work, but I was really able to just hunker down at the kitchen table and hack out code for hours straight. Although library systems doesn’t allow telecommuting on a regular basis, I’ve gotten approval to do it for the rest of the Fridays this month to be be available for baby helping.
This job is also nice because I feel like I’ve finally completed a long circular journey. My library career started in Davis Library as a student assistant for the technical services department. When I was returning to the library as a reserves processor and exploring the (still on the horizon) possibility of library school I contacted one of my old bosses who put me in touch with the guy who is now my new boss in the web team. It’s weird, but it just feels complete. Like I’ve finished one major life stage and am moving on to the next. Although a lot of that may come from the whole baby thing, I’m still loving the new job. Programming has always been one of the “work” activities that just makes the time fly by until I find myself staying ten or fifteen minutes late just to try out one more idea, or wrap up to a stopping point. Somehow I’ve always ended up doing it no matter what job I’ve had, so it’s great to actually get explicitly paid for it.
Brad said
Jul 14, 2008 @ 07:32 PM
Hooray. I’m glad that you’re enjoying the new job. :)
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