About a year ago I took on the role of project manager for Inspyre, a Tampa based web design and CMS hosting company. I'd been with the company several years prior as a developer and the move, at the time seemed to be a good one. There were benefits to the move, both in my career and in my personal life as well as an opportunity to grow experience in an side of the industry that I was arguably the weakest in. I am very glad I made the move at the time and very glad I'm making the move out now.
I learned a lot of things in the past year, that are valuable life and business lessons I'll carry with me for years to come. Maybe most importantly I've learned what it means to try to do a job and come to grips with the idea that you're just not passionate about it.
Inspyre's business model is largely based on rapid turn around of repeated small to medium sized web site projects. As such, the management of their project list is never slow, but also rarely changes. The daily task you're completing today will be the same task that shows up on your list in three months. I've realized this is a huge problem when your life has been spent, in one way or another, creating things. When your passion is to see something new take shape and see something of yourself inside of it, a year of repetition, no matter how good your intention, begins to become a rather serious weight, and you begin to resent the weight, and unfortunately sometimes the company or people that are "placing" the weight on you.
Lessons learned, value received, experience gained, it's now time for another change, in this case back into a development role. I'll still be with Inspyre (despite the occasional stress points I really do love the company) but I'll be back into a position where I'm able to do the things I'm passionate about doing. Throughout my time as project manager I kept involved in several development projects along the way, including building the Inspyre Media Player. Those were the times in the last year I felt the most awake, alive, and committed to my role, and it's obvious to me that it's the role I belong in.
I'll be in a transitional period for the next few weeks, mentoring my replacement and assisting general production of the daily projects we're working on, but some of the projects lined up for the near future are very exciting. Last night was my first meeting with the company owners returning to more of an active development role. We began mapping out a new project that is going to be great for the company and also looks like something really enjoyable to be a part of. It has some unique challenges we've identified and some really great opportunities to be something unique.
In keeping with the theme of returning to older things once placed on hold, I've decided to bring CliffPruitt.com back online. I've not really decided what exactly it's supposed to be other than a place online to keep my junk. As I'm taking the time to deliberately refocus on the things I'm passionate about and the things that spark or result from creativity, this seemed like the natural way to give it a big fat leaky umbrella to fall under. It may be a disjointed frankenstein of mismatched parts but so what? At least I'm making things again.
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