Well the day has arrived, Just shy of 2 years after I joined the staff at the Atwater Library and Computer Centre, it’s is time for me to take my leave and move on to greener pastures. I have hired a great replacement and have complete confidence he will continue the quality of work I have provided for this wonderful organization.
A few days ago, while on my commute, I started to think about how I came to be where I am. I mean I pretty much just landed my dream job, being a Support Agent with the intent to move up to Server Administrator at a Server Farm, that’s a big deal for me. it means my career in the IT industry can and will still grow. But how is it I came to where I am in life?
Woody Allen said:
“We’re all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions, moral choices. Some are on a grand scale, most of these choices are on lesser points. But we define ourselves by the choices we have made. We are, in fact, the sum total of our choices. Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly, Human happiness does not seem to be included in the design of creation. it is only we, with our capacity to love that give meaning to the indifferent universe. And yet, most human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying and even try to find joy from simple things, like their family, their work, and from the hope that future generations might understand more”
“We are, in fact, the sum total of our choices.” – Are we? I mean, yes our choices along the way have helped mold us into who we are, but in reality, our choices are only a fraction of what makes us. I started to look deeper into the path I took to get to where I am, and what life altering events guided me. I didn’t go back too far, I mean the amount of changes in ones life from beginning to end are worth of a Novel, and not just a blog post. I started with the biggest life changing event that happened to me, the death of my Father.
In early September 2008, I was working part time for my father’s design company Koster Interactive Design Inc. along with my brother. Business was slow and my father could only afford to keep me on part time, so I took a job at a call center to make ends meet. a few weeks later on September 25, 2008, my father passed. An event I had no more control over than I do making the sun rise and fall each day.
Shortly after I decided to move out and live with my now ex-girlfriend, in a small bachelor apartment near downtown Ottawa. I lived there for a year, but after 6 months, my ex and I split, again not my own decision, but a life altering event. I became depressed, lost my job and turned into a hermit, not wanting to leave the apartment unless absolutely necessary.
After the year had ended, I moved in with a few friends in a small town called Alexandria, about a half hour out of Ottawa, I focused on web programming and started a venture with an ex-coworker of mine from the call center. After 6 months in the small town, my E.I. (Employment Insurance) ran out and I moved in with my brother in Cornwall, ON.
I took a job at yet another call center, until the contract was canceled leaving the 400 of us without a job and searching for a new one. Cornwall is not exactly and easy place to find a job to begin with, let alone having 399 competitors. I almost had a job at a local circuit board manufacturer, the like my attitude and knowledge and wanted to hire me on, but sadly they were in the middle of a hiring freeze. With no other options, my friend from the call center, who now owned a store in Montreal, offered me a job, it would allow us to work more on our web coding project.
I moved to Dorval, QC, a small suburb of Montreal, and after 8 months of working for my friend from the call center, I decided to move on as the job wasn’t quite what I wanted out of life, so I went job searching and found the job at the Library. I was living with my friend at the time, as we worked together, it seemed logical at the time. As I left for the library, he brought another friend down to help him at the store and she stayed with us at the apartment. A few months later, a heated argument lead to his friend and I moving out.
I moved downtown, closer to work. The commute time went from an hour or so to about 15 minutes. giving me more time in the evenings to relax. After a year and a bit at the library, I decided that with the extra time in the evenings, I could go back to school and started to take Certification Prep courses at Dawson, a block away from the Library.
As the course came to an end, the professor announced one of his previous students was a manager at a Server Farm and there was a job opening for an L1 Support Rep and and L2 Server Admin. Out of 90 people who applied, I got the job.
So now that I have described my short personal trip along the way, let me describe how this pertains to what I started to think about.
- If my father hadn’t passed, I would have never moved out.
- If my ex-gf hadn’t broken up with me, I wouldn’t have gotten depressed and lost my job.
- If the contract at the call center hadn’t been canned, I wouldn’t have had to job search.
- If the circuit board place hadn’t had a hiring freeze, I wouldn’t have moved to Montreal.
- If my friend hadn’t gotten into that argument with our roommate, I wouldn’t have moved downtown.
- Had I not moved downtown I wouldn’t have gone to Dawson.
- If I hadn’t attended Dawson, I wouldn’t have gotten my new job.
A lot of those events, were completely out of my control. So although I have mad many decisions over my lifetime, I am not here because of them alone. I am here because of every decision the either directly, or indirectly affected me. So yeah, we are the total sum of all our choices, but also so much more.
To branch off from that thought, there is another saying, that one person can change the world. Its not that one can change the world, but one has changed the world. Think back to the first decision you ever made that you can remember. Now if you reversed the decision, not only would your life be changed, but do would the hundreds of people that were affected by that and every other decision you made afterwards. Everyone of us, in one way or another, has changed the world, and will continue to do so. We know this as the “Butterfly Effect”.
Now that I have written quite a lot more than I expected, its time to head to my Farwell Party. Today marks the end of one life event, and the start of another.
as a going away present I have a Tech support story for you…
(I work for an IT company that provides 24 hour support for several big buildings. As you can imagine it gets very quiet at night with a lot of down time. The only problem is that the calls come from customers who, putting it kindly, don’t have social skills. I received a call around three am.)
Me: “Welcome to [Company] support desk. You are speaking to [My Name]. How can I help you this morning?”
Customer: “Hi, this is [Location]. None of our computers are working, our servers are all down, and our phone lines. Everything is down and we need it back up and running in the next ten minutes or I will be forced to have you fired.”
Me: *concerned and shocked* “How many computers are affected and how many phones are affected?”
Customer: “ALL OF THEM. About fifty computers and the same amount of phones are not working. You have nine and a half minutes to get it working.”
Me: *now disinterested* “How many people are working in the building right now?”
Customer: “There is me, two security guards, and a couple of men replacing the generators. That’s nine minutes.”
Me: “Sir, silly question but I have to ask this but has the power been turned off to the building by the engineers working on site?”
(The customer started breathing heavily down the phone, leaving the building and walking outside. I could hear the customer start shouting to the engineer to turn on the power while using a curse word every chance he could. I could hear in the distance the workmen stop what they were doing, obvious not liking being called offensive names, and start chasing after the man down the street. The man while out of breath asked for me to call the cops as his life was in danger. I hung up and went back to sleep.)