I thought I'd just give an example of a typical week day for me. Just for the fun of it. Maybe it'll help you get to know me a bit more. If you want to, that is. If you don't, then just don't click to read any more. š
My cellphone alarm buzzes quietly at me at 5:50am. I wake up, snooze it and then cuddle Deidre for a while. At 6am it buzzes again, and I kiss Deidre good morning as I get up and leave her to her sleep. I go into the lounge room and read any email that might have come in overnight. This will include any notifications of comments left on my site, which I will try to respond to if anything comes to mind.
Then I access my Bloglines, which you can see on the right there under 'My Blogroll'. This holds all the sites that are of interest to me, including where I get my news from. Going through the latest posts or stories on here usually takes about 30-40 minutes. This is how I wake up, with news and views aroud the world.
Then I turn the iron on and make myself some weet-bix for breakfast. I eat that while I browse www.stuff.co.nz for the latest local news. Once I've finished eating or reading, whichever comes first, I iron my clothes for the day.
By about 7am I'm in the shower, after getting a towel from the heated towel rack in the bedroom and giving Deidre another good morning kiss as she's waking up to her clock radio. While I'm showering she comes in to do her early morning bathroom stuff, like washing her face, etc, and I tell her the latest 'daily outrage' I might have read on the news. This is usually the latest crap that comes to light about George Bush, or some other injustice or outrage around the world.
I get dressed while Deidre does, then I pack up the laptop and prepare to go to work as Deidre is finishing getting dressed. I kiss her goodbye and leave, driving down the hill to park at the local train station, where I leave the car parked for free and catch a bus into the city.
I get to work around 7:45am, and after setting the laptop up, I get myself a drink of water. This is my first drink of the day. If I'm feeling indulgent, I'll get a cup of coffee from the percolator. I log into the network and check the email that's come in overnight. I then see what jobs need doing and do them, or reassign jobs to other people to do.
My role at work, as systems administrator, is to administrate and support the internal systems of the company. If people need to be setup on anything, it comes to the office I'm in, which has 3 of us looking after it. I'm always first in, according to shift rostering, so I try to make sure any jobs overnight have been done by me or assigned accordingly.
This process continues throughout the day. As jobs come in, I'm responsible for assigning them around the 3 of us, or onto other people, trying to balance workload according to who's best suited for the task, or whatever. There's not enough to keep all 3 of us busy, so if we were to do everything in one go that we do during the day, we'd probably only be working about 3 hours each. When I was recently looking after the entire office by myself, doing the work of all 3 of us for about 2 weeks (the other 2 were off on sick leave), it was enough to keep me busy for the whole day, but not overloaded.
In between the times I'm not doing actual work, I browse the web for new information, new blogs, new Web 2.0 stuff. I keep up to date with the news sites, watching breaking news as they come in. I investigate ways of making my blog better, or write posts to my blogs. I write emails to friends or to Deidre, and I generally keep myself busy. Not always on work, but always 'working'..
Between 12-1pm I go to lunch with Deidre, and we catch up on her morning's activities. There's not usually anything interesting of mine for her to catch up on, so she tells me all about her problems and gossip and stuff.
I leave for the day around 4-5pm, depending on how focused I am on whatever I'm doing at that time (which could be work related or not). I walk to the train station in the city, which is a nice 10-15 minute walk, and catch a bus back to the car and then drive home. Once at home I setup the laptop again, plugging it into the local network at home, and catch up on any email or sites I might have missed out on during the previous few hours. I write more blog posts or work on finding better ways of doing things for the blog.
Around 6:30pm Deidre comes home and we spend an hour or so with me listening to her get off her day's frustrations, before we make dinner. We usually spend the evening together either chatting, watching tv, or miscellaneous stuff. She might do her own thing and I'll be relaxing on the computer doing the same kind of thing I did during the day.
Around 11pm we go to bed. Go back to the top of the page and start again…
I'm in a very much ideal job for myself at the moment, where I get to do everything that is expected of me at work, as well as my own stuff. I'm not exactly challenged by my work, but they're aware of that, and they understand that there's not enough to keep all 3 of us busy. They're working on changing that, but only recently have they come to us and said, "Find your own projects. Do what interests you. Keep yourself busy."
I have been….! But on Friday I started investigating and moving forward on the process to start a company blog. I'll keep you updated on how that goes.
So anyway, that's my average day. There's an indistinguishable line at times on my work and my interests: – computers, software, writing and technology. This is why I do it all during the day and then come home and relax by doing exactly the same thing…. I love it!
I got into IT about 9 years ago because it paid me for doing what I was passionate about, and that's been the case ever since. I love my job – and my life.
I wrote out my application letter for the Team Leader position this afternoon, going through all the reasons why I'd be best for the job. I'm sure of it – there's no one else there at the moment that would be as good in that role as me. I've been there long enough, have a solid amount of skills, experience and management qualities to back me up, including a strong familiarity with the way everything works and fits together. But, of course, if I didn't believe I was best for the role, I wouldn't be applying for it, would I. *grin*
I got a very good tip today from one of the new 'lifehack' sites I've discovered (more about that in another post), about providing a strategy agenda of my first 3 months to the interviewers, to show them how committed I am to hitting the ground running. I'll be working on that over the next few days, detailing my plan of attack should I get the position. It's something people just don't do in a job interview, so it'll put me ahead of the pack.
Update: please feel free to write about your own average day on your own blog, and link back to this or tell me about it in the comments here. I'd love to read about your daily life too!
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