The Present

My present employment situation is one that brings a smile to my face, much like the time I realized my wife loved me as much as I loved her. I still feel that feeling. It is so fantastic. When I get up in the morning and I know that I am going to work with like-minded people with the same goal, I am happy. I am in a good place. Are there any issues?
Using my post about the past, let's review:

1. The work. Of course, there are challenges with the work I do. We maintain user guides in MS Word and there is a lot of content that is shared across documents. For example, if there is a global change that affects all clients, we write once, copy, and paste into multiple documents. It is not effective.
   
   And here's where I make a distinction between where I am now and where I was. We want to use the correct tool, the tool that will make our work that much easier. We want to adopt a tool, whether it is a tool that continues to use Word as its word processor or not, that will take content that is tagged for a specific client and spit out documentation that can then be published. And here's the kicker: we would write once and apply it to multiple companies. It's a concept called "single-sourcing." Yes, other companies have known about it for years and used it for years, but we are just now getting to it.
   
   And it is wonderful to be able to analyze and question "what makes sense?" and then do it.
2. The people. It is easy - so easy - to draw a distinction between where I was and where I am now regarding the people. I start with my manager, who rocks. She is so easy to work with. She knows that we know what has to do and *challenges* us to find the best way to do it.
   
   On top of that, I work with Joe, who is a musician and plays in the band, and I work with Matthew, who is a musician and plays in the band. The three of us are friends. We share a common bond, both at work and outside of work. We are all different personalities, for sure, but we find a common ground.
3. The commute. It is a quick jaunt, usually about 15 minutes. The irony of where I work now is that it is in the same area of town as Iowa City Regina, which is the school my kids used to go to. Now, when I work near their school and getting to school functions would be easy, I now work further away from their schools.