Preparation for Personal Development Conversation

Since I was a child, or more specifically since I could write, I’ve been writing short stories. Sometimes, or actually quite often, I only wrote a summary or a skeleton for a story and then left it at that. For school I also wrote a few short stories and I received a 9 for one of those stories which is the equivalent of an A. Another piece I wrote got me an 8 and the teacher, who was very strict, classified that as a “very good, with some exercise you could become a writer”. A 9 or 10 meant “You should be a writer”. Even though my Dutch teacher didn’t quite see a writer in me, I definitely had the highest grade in the class.


I never wanted to be a writer, because my parents taught me that it was not a proper job. I had to want to become something “normal”, like a teacher or a nurse. So I wanted to become a teacher, or a nurse. I didn’t act as if I really wanted to become a teacher or a nurse, and quite honestly, that was because I didn’t want to become a teacher nor a nurse. However, when I had to make a first choice, I still fooled myself into thinking I wanted to become a nurse. Even at the tender age of 12 I just wanted to write.

I wanted to write, but didn’t want to become a writer. I still don’t really, the prospect of having to think up thinks to write about scares the hell out of me. Writer’s block is a very real thing and I never wanted to have to battle that for the sake of making some money. So I made a sensible choice and studied information services and management and ended up in IT.

A lot of people think working in IT is not very creative. It might not be art, though I challenge you to defend that statement, but IT is as creative as one can become. Thinking up solutions for IT problems, or wishes from users requires quite a bit of knowledge of IT (What is possible? About everything!) and creativity. I thought I wanted to do something more creative. A colleague once told me that working in IT, in what we did, means you have a very creative job.There is never just one way to solve a problem and when you manage to come up with really inventive and creative solutions, the bit of software you want to deliver might exceed expectations. I also like to boast about how useful such piece of software can be if built, implemented and used propperly. Definitely more useful than a movie or a song. (After at least 2 years I’m still angry with Jason with feeling sorry for us office mongers. I’m sure I even blogged a very angry blob about that on this particular blobber…uh-blogger, blogspot.)

Thinking about it, you might think I get enough creative stimulance. Yes, well. At this moment I landed in a department where technical connections between applications are realized. They standardized the proces and products to come to a connection. That’s all very noble and wise for the sake of maintenance, but it also makes my job just that bit dull. I’m restricted to selecting or not selecting certain functional steps. To keep things simple there are only 5 functional steps and I have to decide, based on information I should get from our clients, which one to use and which one not to use. From that point on, it’s all pretty much the same for every connection.

What's grey I'm not going to use.

I can get my kicks out of this job, because I have to meet and talk to so many people. That’s where the creativity lies in my job, getting the information and data I need to make a design. Still. I want to do something more creative. Something with which I can express myself. That’s my complaint. Yes, that’s why I’m polluting this part of the web with my never ceasing blabbering.

So that’s a bit of my day-to-day life. My job. That what I (I’m supposed to) do on a daily basis when the day is not Saturday or Sunday.