Czym jest życie i kariera?

I saw this editorial at Lockergnome and it struck a chord with me. What if you took another path in life? is a great question to ask yourself. Not to elicit regrets or think about what might have been. Not to question your choices in life. I'm a firm believer in dealing with your future and what you can do from now on. Complaining or dwelling on the past doesn't help, especially in business. You can definitely learn from it, but what's done is done and you should move forward with what you can control.

That being said, we all meander through life, some of us with a better guiding compass than others. And even with the best of intentions or goals to drive you, it's easy to get off course from the destination that you set for yourself.

Life gets in the way. Work, family, kids, sports, hobbies, yard work, etc. all distract us from one thing or another. And while you may focus on one goal, you might be neglecting others in your life.

You career is one area that you should stop and think about from time to time. And those times should be less than a year. Examining whether the position or place you are in is still in your goals is a great way to ensure that you are happy in your job. Or that you are doing something to get happy with employment, even if that means looking for another job.

If you're anything like me, while you may really enjoy or love computers, you probably stumbled into DBA work. I don't know any DBA that thought about working with databases as a kid. Or even as a college student. I know I wanted to program and work with computers, but being a DBA is something I stumbled upon while doing network administration.

That was 14 years ago and since that job I've held 7 other jobs. And more and more as I've changed jobs, I become more picky and reexamine what it is that I really want to do. I look back at things I've enjoyed, things I used to enjoy but don't have time for, and things that I've wondered about. My job searches usually start with a wide variety of jobs as I consider different positions and companies and then narrow down. I've tended to stick with SQL Server in some sense because I enjoy it. I deviated into management a few times, usually regretting the move, but I made that decision since I wanted to be a CIO when I was younger.

Now I know better.

So stop and think about the paths that you've had a chance to take or that you almost took. Think about the paths that you wanted early in life or your career. Don't have any regrets, but see if the place you are in now is the place that you want to be.

And make sure that you move towards that place.