Jenn The Geek

The Importance of Having Projects

December 1st, 2009 / Geek At Work / 2 Comments »

I’m a projects person. I love projects. I love having something to play around with when my regular responsibilities get to be old hat. I love the challenge of having something else to think about besides school work or real work – something that stretches my mind a bit and keeps me from losing touch with reality.

I’ve been struggling with not having a project for the last few months. When I got back from Europe and found myself with a few weeks with nothing to do but enjoy summer vacation I was itching to DO something, to create something, but I didn’t know what. Instead I played around with my blogs. I decided to leave forever-digital behind and move here. And that kept me occupied for a while, but it wasn’t the project I was looking for.

It was incredibly frustrating. I hadn’t started work yet, I was in the process of moving and starting my post-college life, but at the same time I felt almost directionless. My mind was idling.

When I started work a lot of these frustrations were set aside as I learned the ropes of the corporate world and had some work projects to keep me occupied for a while, but now that I’m more settled in and I’ve gotten to a point where I’ve struck a decent work/life balance, I’m ready to get back into my personal projects. Now that I know how much time I need for work and how much time I need for a social life and all that, I’m ready to tackle MY projects again.

Having all of this time to really think about what I want to do has been incredibly helpful and for the first time ever my need to create something has matched up with having the time to do it. I’ve had this idea mulling around in my head for a few months and I’ve finally gotten it down on paper and it’s almost ready for the next step: action.

I’m really excited about it and when it gets a bit more fleshed out I’ll try to share some of it, but for now I’m just really thankful to have a problem that I find personally interesting to work on for the first time since I finished school in May. Here’s hoping it all works out!

Tags: happiness, projects, success, work-life balance