A beautiful pre-dawn moon over the canyon to the East.

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life... or will you?

Adminisk8or

08/20/2023

Everyone, more or less, has a "busy season" at their place of work. You might be a tax associate company, and have quarterly and yearly such times. You might be a supermarket and have busy holiday seasons. Working as a network engineer for a vast host of clientele, and a good portion of those being charter schools... well, guess what week it was?

Yeah, it's been busy, busy, busy- and it hasn't just been schools, too- I've been having to juggle a few projects relating to a fire district, an equipment supply company, and many more. But none has taken the stage quite like a certain client of ours. If you happen to live anywhere near me (like, within a hundred or so miles), there's a possibility you even saw a news article about this client. They have had a campus setup at this OLD building about an hour's drive from my work- but this summer, they were working on standing up a new campus at a more remote city that's even further (and kind of in the middle of the desert) away from my work. I was there six before school was to begin, and door locks were still being installed, walls still being finished, and there was straight-up scaffolding work still happening. And yet, they opened on the very deadline day they had planned. You might be waiting for me to handout a "Wow, amazing!" or "They really pulled it close on this one, but man what a good job!". I desire to give no such compliments to them.

Our coms team (who runs the wires and sets up cameras, door locks, etc.) have been working for months, since we onboarded them as a new client this early summer to get this new campus ready. The day before school started, they were all a' panic and anxiously inquiring our way, because they didn't have any phones setup. Perhaps they wouldn't have been in this state had they planned things in proper advance time, so we would've had plenty of time and then some for the phones to arrive and for us to install them. But even still, miraculously, the phones arrived that very day before school started. So, I and my coworker went out to get the phones installed. I showed up that day, and was caught up in a mile-long car jam of parents picking up students. As no one was moving fast, I decided to pull of the road about a quarter mile or more away from the school and hike the phones over. With 11 boxes, each containing 5 phones, I managed to heft 3 of those 11 boxes to the door before I nearly killed over from hauling those in the hot August desert sun. The rest I was able to haul from only about half that distance, as I was then able to pull up to the parking lot's outer edge.

A lot of numbers in that last paragraph... sounds like a math problem, right? Ah, but before I even got onsite, though, I had been informed by the coms team that they were already furious and angry at us that we didn't already have the phones installed and ready. Given the fact that A) they didn't give us enough time to order the phones enough in advance, B) they didn't give us ANY information prior about setting up extensions for classrooms, and C) I had to haul heavy boxes across the godforsaken desert landscape in that hot august sun... I was just glad I didn't meet the woman who brought up these complaints that day, lest certain choice words might've been had. Talk about being driven at the crack of the whip, and no thanks for it.

But things have been otherwise good, lately. I tried taking all of Thursday and Friday off, and still managed to have more time this week than I should've worked. Actually, it was a week or two ago that, in our Monday morning meetings, I realized I'm a little too well suited for the work I do. People, mentioning the highlights of their weekend, brought up gaming, building sheds, etc. Me? My highlight was making HomeAssistant work with 3CX. I'll probably get the same strange looks this week that I got that week, as one of my better highlights was helping my brother install a wall-mount network rack at his place. But honestly, I find it to be good fun, for whatever reason! I honestly couldn't fully explain why.

Given that train of thought, I can never not think of that fairly well known quote, shared in two forms- one by Confucius, and another by Mark Anthony- If you love what you do, you'll never work another day in your life. And until recently, it never occurred to me how true and how false that statement is. On the one hand, like I've already mentioned, I am perhaps one of the finest examples of it. I never quite honestly dreamed that would be the case for me, but here I am! And yeah, overall, everything I do or learn to do at work is something I enjoy in one aspect or another.

On the other hand, though, (and as much as it beguiles me to put a "but" in front of the wise words of an ancient sage), it's a blanket statement- and you should never, ever trust a blanket statement! ...wait, I... guess that was a blanket statement... oops. But my point is, I love working with networks, laptops and all the stuff that revolves around it- but even I will admit (and in fact, I indirectly already have with my first few paragraphs) that while I love sallying forth with a grin on my way to a given task on any workday, sometimes it's not all sunshine and rainbows. The occasional metaphoric wrench is thrown into the works- and I don't deny I'll one day come across a literal wrench thrown in the works... it seems likely enough to happen to me, to be honest.

I know I sound like your grandpa that always says the same thing over and over again, but as the name of my website implies... sometimes things are gonna get less than fun- even ugly. So, will I really never work another day in my life if I love what I do? No, sometimes work is just work and you have to bear it with restrained fists when violence is your inclined response, zipped lips when choice words is your parrying weapon of choice, and patient arms and shoulders when you find yourself carrying fifteen phones across desert sands.

And wait with some patience, because all Mondays have an end. They don't always end on Monday, but they do eventually end. Until next time, see ya!