New Layoffs Bring Old Friends

I’ve been getting more popular lately.  I’d like to think it’s because I’m a genuinely cool person that so many old friends are suddenly getting back in touch with me, but unfortunately, it is more due to the current economic situation.  I’ve been getting more and more requests to join social networking sites or to add connections in the ones I already belong to.  While I do wish that these people had kept in touch (I honestly do consider them friends as well as former coworkers), I can also appreciate the urgency of their need to reconnect and I’m trying to be a good friend and be generous with recommendations and such.

To be honest, I also got busy and didn’t keep in touch, but I always knew I could count on them for recommendations if I needed them, so it’s only fair!

Right now, I feel incredibly lucky to be hired on to a company just before they instituted a hiring freeze.  Every time I listen to the news, (I’m not big on watching the news or reading it, but listening to it in the car works well) I hear about another company cutting jobs, reporting losses, or even just throwing in the towel.  I can’t say I was surprised to hear that Nortel is considering bankruptcy , but it’s still ominous all the same.  Any place I have worked, people were far busier ripping out old legacy nortel equipment than they were interested in installing any new equipment from them, so that tends to translate into a company not doing so well.  Still, it only adds to the dark clouds.

I would have to say, up until the past month, I have believed that this recession was something that the majority of people would weather fairly well and that it would just be a couple of years before the economy was back humming right along.  Now I’m not so sure.  It almost seems as if the entire US and by extension, world economy were just a house of cards waiting to fall, all depending on everyone, from huge corporations to individuals, to keep spending beyond their means, racking up huge piles of debt in the process.  Now it is as if the loan sharks have come calling and even the deepest pockets realize that they are not deep enough to pay up.

I also find it interesting that the huge corporations that blindly spent, paying out incredible salaries to their executives, are the first to be bailed out by the government while there seems to be no intention of helping out individuals or families who are guilty of the same financial crimes as the corporations.  It appears that the very wealthiest portion of society that was at the helm of these corporations is the only portion of society that the government is willing to assist even when they are far less likely to need it.

This blog is primarily about networking, but I can’t help but express my disillusionment in a democratic government that has clearly given up any concern for its people in exchange for being bought by large corporations.

Knowing Thyself = Knowing How to Succeed

I am a creative person, which often surprises people that assume that a person working in networking would be analytical by nature.  I believe, however, that creativity is essential for being able to think beyond current constraints and for being able to visualize that which really isn’t visual.  Troubleshooting a juicy network issue is much like unraveling a knot, which requires an ability to see beyond just a tangle of threads.  The best network engineers I know are ones that never take anything for granted and instead are able to see beyond what is to what could be.  That is creativity, baby.

To that end, I find a lot of advice geared toward endeavors more traditionally considered creative is relevant and helpful in my world as well.  I have several websites I wander through each day as part of my habits, generally when I’m procrastinating starting something new or stuck on something I’ve begun.  A lot of the advice I read has to do with knowing yourself.  You would think that after living with myself for 31 years, I’d be an expert at who I am and how I function, but the truth is, I don’t think any of us, no matter how old, are completely in tune with ourselves.  It has taken me almost this many years to figure out exactly how my brain learns new information and come up with the best ways to get new information into it.  I’ve also discovered, grudgingly, that I’m really much smarter in the morning than as the day wears on…by the time I hit the sheets, I’ve gotten almost to reality TV levels of intelligence.  This has forced me, against my will, to become a “morning person.”  I’d rather stay up late, but staying up late leads me to be a moron, so I wake up early while my neurons still fire decently and get to work.

To that end, I found the following blog fascinating, describing the routines of great writers.  Each of them had to develop their own way of approaching and structuring their day so that they could be productive.  It’s led me to look at my own routines and think about how I might tweak them to fit more with how I work best…within the confines of my working hours and my humble cube, of course.