Thursday, May 29, 2014

My Profile

At work, we have an internal website and within that website, we can enter a profile that tells others who we are. This is my profile:

Born and raised in Cedar Rapids. Earned a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1992. Married my beautiful wife in 1993. Did telemarketing full-time, until I left to work a temporary scoring project in November 1992 for ACT. Was hired to enter FAFSAs at ACT and did that from 1/1993 - 2/10/1995, when I was hired as a Documentation Specialist at a software company in Cedar Rapids. Worked there 3 years until I went to another company. Stayed there 9 months (they were having issues with payroll) until I went to another company. Was the only technical writer for 12 years. Left there to go to another company for a few months until I came here.

Outside of work, I play drums both in a band called Uncle Rico the Band as well as at Mass.

Conversions are my specialty. Everywhere I go, it seems like there is a conversion from one help file format to another. I am really intrigued by the prospect of a single source for documentation. I love the idea of maintaining text that is used by multiple documents in one place and then seeing the changes ripple through to the documents that use that snippet.

What I find amazing is after the hell I was going through in May 2011, I will reach my 3 year anniversary at work on Saturday, 5/31/2014. From where I was to where I am now seems remarkable. My mind was consumed with feelings of inadequacy that I pray no one ever has to go through. I thought I was a failure in all aspects of my life, not only as a father and husband, but as a professional technical writer.

Now, I feel so much better about who I am. Life is busy and I have moved along.

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