Welcome to the inaugural entry in this weblog! Glad you could make it. I hope you’ve visited the restroom before we depart on this journey because it’s a long trip and I’m not making any stops. So if you haven’t done so, you better do it now. Go ahead. The rest of us will wait…
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Okay, everyone ready to go? Good. Now we can begin.
The goal of this initial entry is to get you familiarized with what I am doing an why exactly I’m doing it. So lets go back to the “beginning”. I graduated from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs four years ago with a degree in Computer Science. Given my propensity for problem solving and logical thought (yeah, yeah, yeah.. [insert your witty joke/remark here]), it seemed to be the perfect career for me.
In June of 2001, a month after graduation, I started working for Lockheed Martin in Colorado Springs as a software engineer. I should have known something was wrong when I got off to a very slow start. For the first six months, I did practically nothing at work. I wasn’t learning anything, I wasn’t growing, and most importantly, I wasn’t doing what I really wanted to do which was writing computer software. I basically had slipped through the cracks of this enormous company. However, I was hesitant to speak up because I thought this was how it was for all college hires. So I bided my time and kept my mouth shut. Eventually, things began to change and I started to get tasked with some programming work. For the next few months, life was pretty good. I was doing what I wanted to do at work and getting paid very well for it. I had an apartment, was saving for a new vehicle, and had a steady girlfriend. I really had no complaints. Then in May of 2002, things began to change again. The project I was working on ran into budget problems and I was moved to another project. At the time, I was told this was going to be a great opportunity for me and that there was going to be a lot of software for me to write. That couldn’t have been further from the truth.
When I was moved, the project I was moved to was still in it’s infancy. That is, the only work being done was proposal and procurement work. Since I had no experience in either of those, I was given absolutely zero tasking. A routine day consisted of coming in at 7am, surfing the internet for the next eight hours, and then going home. Rinse and repeat for the next five months. It’s not that I was lazy, it’s that there just wasn’t anything for me to work on. Again, I should have then realized that something was wrong. There were actually quite a few times when I seriously thought about quitting just to break the monotony. Once again, things started to get better though they were never that great. I pretty much resigned myself to the thought that this was how every job was and that I should just get used to it and try to be happy with my position in life. After all, things could have been a lot worse. For the next two years, things stayed pretty much the same. My job wasn’t all that enjoyable but at least it was a secure job and I was making good money. I casually searched for different jobs in the software industry from time to time and even considered a moving to different cities but I could never find the motivation to actually put in the effort required to make something happen.
Near the end of 2004, my job was becoming less and less enjoyable to the point where it was all I could do to get myself to work every morning. My energy levels where severely decreasing and the most exciting part of my day tended to be coming home from work, lying on the couch, and watching television. What a pathetic existence. I was miserable. That’s about the time I started to think that my life was headed in the completely wrong direction and that something needed to change. I started to think that the software industry wasn’t what I wanted to do with my life and there had to be something better for me. But what could I do? That’s what I went to school for and that’s what I knew. The prospect of going back to school and learning another trade was not very exciting since I really didn’t care much for college the first time through. So the thoughts of a career change pretty much ended there and I went back to living in the rut I was in.
Then one Sunday in January, everything started to change. That morning at church, I was browsing the announcement bulletin and something caught my eye. An organization called International Teacher Placement Service was looking for people to go to China, Japan, and other Far East countries to teach conversational English. What really piqued my interest was that the only requirements were that an applicant was a native English speaker and held a college degree of any major. When I got home, I went to the organization’s website and started to have a look around. At that time, I had no real intention of applying. I was merely interested.
Over the next few weeks, I found myself exploring the idea more and before I knew it, I was asking questions and seriously considering making this change. It completely took me by surprise because for the first time in my life, I really felt like God was leading me. The more I learned about the opportunity, the more excited I got and the more I felt like this was what I was meant to do at this point of my life. The timing seemed to be perfect. I didn’t have a job I cared much for, I didn’t have a girlfriend or wife, I didn’t own a house, and I didn’t have much debt. There was absolutely nothing tying me to this city or even this country and there didn’t seem to be any reason why I should not pursue this opportunity. Before long, I had become completely obsessed with the prospect and the next thing I knew, I was sending in an application. And the rest, as they say, is history.
There is so much I have left out of this story for the sake of brevity but I’m sure a lot of it will find it’s way into future entries. In closing, I thank you for your thoughts and your prayers as I embark on this exciting adventure and I hope you will come back often to check on my progress!
