Remember Dave Mason’s song from way back? Remade a thousand times, there’s a bunch of local artists that did a version for charity that’s pretty cool. The time between posts here has grown longer these days, and I don’t have any problem with that. We’ve got a few inches (and even more centimetres) of snow on the ground this morning, pretty cool with that as well. For me, apart from the title and the funky groove in the song, the tie in to this post is the first line of that song: “Seem’s I’ve got to have a change of scene…”
After spending a fair bit of time working with UBC over the past 3 years, I have told them that it’s time for me to move on. All kinds of reasons around the decision, the big ones are that the work wreaks havoc with my calendar, and the fact that I’d rather clean toilets than grade assignments (and I’m not all that good at cleaning toilets, for that matter).
Interlude: that ‘cleaning toilets’ reminds me of a story. Owen was eating an apple while sitting on the toilet the other day (no, I didn’t ask why), and he dropped that apple into the toilet bowl. Faced with the choice of fishing out the buoyant apple and hoping that it would go down the drain, of course Owen chose the latter (didn’t press him on that one, either).
Turns out that a barely eaten, very buoyant Granny Smith is more than a match for the twisty passages of our toilet, and I came home from a full day of training to find a snake and plunger sitting on the bathroom floor, and everyone having to visit the downstairs bathroom to do their job. I wasn’t interested in dealing with that issue that evening.
Picked up a new toilet ring on the way home the following evening and dove in. None of this kids stuff, the first thing I did was pull the whole damn toilet out and attack it from the other end. The snake didn’t seem to have much of an appetite, and only took a few nibbles out of the apple (even less than Owen, if you can believe it), and repeated attacks did little more than change the smell in the room to something akin to shitty apple pie.
After attacking it for quite a while, I turned the toilet right-side up again, and there was a little splash as the apple dropped down somewhere in the bowels of the toilet. With that, I called Owen in, with his thinner arm, to help out. Somehow his arm disappeared up to his elbow, and he exclaimed “I can reach it!”. He dug in with his nails, and managed to pull the whole damned thing out, remarkably preserved given where it had been hiding for the past 24 hours.
No, I didn’t make him finish his apple, though I was tempted. I think that was enough father-son bonding for one evening.
Anyways, back to the original story.
It actually took a while to decide that it was time to move on to UBC. It can generally be pretty tough to leave money on the table, particularly when business as a whole is down overall. I’ve all but decided that it’s pointless to pursue work in the US, even if it does come with a free grope at the airport these days. Now that much of the work with them is completed (I’ve written two courses for them [both projects from hell], spent the last week teaching project management to a network administration group, I’m finishing another offering of my teamwork course there Monday night, and have a few more sessions of facilitation with the last group I’m working with there), it is feeling better every day (how many old songs could I reference in one blog?).
I’m interested in working more with industry clients again – sitting down with them and helping them plan and run their projects more successfully. If I look back over the years, that has provided some of the most rewarding experiences for me. Better value for them, and it pays better with no homework to grade – it’s a no-lose scenario!
No change comes without some cost, though. The UBC stuff has been steady, reliable income, and there is some ramp-up as the focus changes direction. I’ve dealt with that lack of steady income before, and while it will not be easy this time around, given the level of that steady income, Winney and I agree that it’s not worth continuing in that direction.
Regarding that ramp-up, I got an interesting e-mail from a previous client out of the blue this week. In what was titled a ‘modest proposal’, they indicated they have a project that has been running for a few months, and they have discovered they need to step back and plan it more effectively. They’re getting together in a few weeks for a big planning session, and were asking if I would be interested in facilitating that session.
Um…let me think about that one…
So over the past few weeks, it feels like a burden is being lifted (though there is a backlog of grading that I’m avoiding at the moment), and that new direction has been affirmed through great discussions with a few people I consider as mentors, and validated by a real client as well. I’ve got no illusions that it’s going to be a completely graceful transition, but it does feel that we’re finally coming out of those doldrums that have been around for the past few years.
We’re in the final throes of completing the studio in the backyard as well, and for the days that I have managed to head out there to get work done (rather than being out at UBC), the productivity and focus has been strong. The best name for the place I can think of right now is the “Dawg Haus” (likely a foreshadowing of one of it’s uses) – any other suggestions?
re: name for backyard studio …. “The Head Space”