This is just going to be a short post just to put out there what I’m doing now. My last post here was almost 2 years ago so a lot has changed since then.

Back in 2016 I was working in Sydney and commuting from Wollongong so around 2 hours each way on the train. I spent the time on the train doing some programming and trying to improve my skills. I also blogged about these projects and these are the last posts I wrote here.

In March 2017 I took a new position in Wollongong which meant several things:

1. No more commuting!
2. Less perceived urgency for career progression as the job is well paying and close to home
3. A very different career path than I could’ve predicted

When I first started this blog I intended for it to be a virtual resume of sorts. I wanted to showcase my studies and show potential employers my skills. And it served this purpose! When I was offered my current position I was told that one of the reasons they chose me was because this blog gave credence to my abilities! They knew I had the technical ability because of the projects I had been working on here at my blog!

Even before starting this position but especially since I have not paid much attention to this blog. I was busy learning on the job and enjoying my new found spare time by not having to commute. Truth be told I was also busy planning a wedding and getting used to my life where I was committed to living in Wollongong. It was a good time and I have enjoyed the break from the constant trying to achieve.

Now that’s not to say that I haven’t been learning. As I mentioned above my new role is very different from previous positions. Between 2012 and this new role in early 2017 I was working as IT support for cancer services at several hospitals. I did general IT system administrator work as well as application support for a product called MOSAIQ used in cancer treatment centres for patient management. My new role is as a report developer. I work with 2 main tools: QlikView and SAP Business Objects. I don’t do any general IT work and haven’t been near MOSAIQ at all in this new role. It’s been quite a change!

So for the past year and a half I have been learning about data and how to interpret and represent it to make meaningful reasonings from it. This new focus has meant that my prior areas of study, namely programming and website development, have fallen by the wayside. In fact, I haven’t been doing any additional study in part because my brain power has been expended at work and so by the time I get home I just want to relax and not do any study. But I have also found it difficult to find new course/subjects which would be beneficial to this new role. However now I want to make a bit of a start on some more studying.

I’m planning to begin working on a series of online courses on data science and analytics. My line of thinking is that these will assist with my current role and perhaps open up new opportunities. Something I’ve been thinking about recently is that I don’t really have a good plan for the future. Truth be told I basically have no plan! And that’s ok. I don’t know what the future holds! 8 years ago when I started working in my first real IT role I could not have predicted that I’d end up working as a data report developer. But I did some study in fields related to my role and eventually, that led me to where I am today.

I don’t know what the future holds but I do know that continued study will never be wasted time. So I’m going to resume my studying in a direction related to my current role. I figure this will reinforce my current work, make me more hireable to the people I come into contact with and potentially open up new opportunities. I don’t know exactly what those will be but with this extra study, I’m hoping I will be better prepared for when they arrive.

I’ll leave this short post here and hopefully be following it up very shortly with some projects from my study!