Right before I put in my 2-week's notice at my previous, mind-numbing job that made me want to gouge my eyes out every night, I had a little bit of this Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon going on. Everyone was telling me that I needed to "look after myself, because no one else is going to." Yes. In pretty much those exact words. Friends of mine that didn't know each other except maybe by name were telling me this.
I admit that I was freaking out over the notion of actually putting in my 2-week's notice, but in the overall scheme of things it was a trivial event. I got this "we've been treating you so well, but you haven't been returning the favor" spiel right after, but since actually leaving I haven't looked back.
There is something to be said about being happy with your job that I was taking for granted. My original thought process was highly negative, where I believed it wasn't possible to be happy working anywhere because of the conceptual idea of being a programmer for a company -- I view myself as a tool to help others accomplish their dreams. I suppose I believed that happiness could only be attained by accomplishing my own dreams, so I was content being miserable at my old job for a long time.
You don't have to be striving for your own dreams to be happy, and once again making a major change in my life has resulted in happiness. Though, I must admit, I once again needed a push to make the change.
Pretty much everything at the new job is better. I'm learning a lot from just a week's work and a couple days of training. The people are great, the code is challenging, and I've been picking up a lot of SQL. That was something I used very little of in the previous job, and I really only had to do some basic queries outside of the LLBLGen. Technically the new job uses NHibernate, but that's just within the site directly. I've been doing a lot of work thus far directly in SQL Management Studio with some insane queries and stored procedures that are TSQL heavy.
With the previous job, I was also annoyed that my college experience had been solely application development, but the work experience was pushing me towards web development. The new job ensures that I've pretty much sealed my career with web development (or the first job does? I tried looking for a non-web job and my resume had those places practically laughing at me), but I can be fine with this. After all, my own dreams are non-web based, and I do feel as though I can program on my freetime without being burnt out. They are two different animals, even if ASP.NET means I'm practically programming in C# all day.
The same week I started work, I also got in a relationship. This probably also helps with my sudden boost of confidence. I can be alert while at work, but then I can dial it down and relax while socializing with this dude who's either on the same wavelength or doesn't judge on various topics. Being completely comfortable talking about anything is something I don't experience with many people. It's easy to have a physical attraction to someone, but having an emotional attraction is much more difficult.
I did start up a new collaborative YouTube channel with my friend Becky. She wanted me to make a programming tutorial, but I think that's going to be a very long side project. Still, I went ahead and made a first video. If you already know how to program, it will probably be very boring to watch.
