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Author Micah Cambre

Tag: job

Ch Ch Ch Changes

Yesterday morning was a big morning for me as I made a huge decision to leave my current job. I gave my two weeks notice and have decided to accept a similar position for a company that is closer to my house. This decision did not come lightly, but I believe that for my future it was necessary for me to make this decision. It allows me the necessary lifestyle that I have been missing since I began this job last July. I am sad to leave behind some great people working for a great company, but I look forward to my next adventure and am excited at the opportunity and possibilities that shall await as I continue in my journey!

So what changes are going to be made exactly? I currently live in two places, one on the weekend and one on the weekday. In two weeks, I shall give up my weekday place. I shall finally, once again, be able to live in one place full-time and not having to commute between two places with half of my stuff. This, in itself, is a HUGE bonus personally in many ways. Living in two places constantly is not easy and I don’t expect anyone to try and take on the kind of life I’ve lived these past months. But, I knew what I was facing when I started this job and had every intention of seeking a place closer to work. However, trying to find decent real estate/apartment/place to live near or in Santa Monica is next to impossible, especially with my current financial situation (which isn’t necessarily bad).

Another thing I shall leave behind is the daily bus trip to and from work. I will begin driving to work, and it will take just around 20 minutes, plus or minus 10. This is awesome!! Commuting to Santa Monica back and forth is exhausting from where I live, but wasn’t impossible. Taking the bus was pretty easy because I knew the schedule and was there on time everyday. But, waiting for the bus when it was late or not even coming gets annoying, and that’s happened to me on more than one occasion. Having my car immediately available shall be a nice change of pace.

I think the best part about this whole change will be having more time available to me. When I arrive back to my house on the weekends, I’m pooped. I usually work on Saturday and Sunday, although I should be working on some freelance projects, I typically take the time to rest myself. I just never feel up to actually doing anything productive, so Saturday evening to Sunday evening are typically my time. Every now and then I’ll get to something when I feel up to it, but I won’t press myself either. Knowing that I have a long week ahead of me, with a big commute to another place, it definitely took a toll on me. But with this commute virtually now cut in half and my salary resuming back to normal, I shall have the opportunity to spend time doing things which I have wanted when I otherwise have not had time or resources.

This change is bittersweet, as I expected it would be. There are a lot of great people working here and I wish them the best, but I look forward to the new opportunities that I face and can’t wait for the next adventure!

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less work please

No more web design projects.

I can’t handle anymore at the moment. I am inundated with so much to do right now and I want a break. I’ve had to purposely neglect my own website while I finish these other projects. It sucks too because I can always use the extra money and pages to put into my portfolio. But, I realize I’m in over my head and I’m a little burnt out. Maybe this’ll change sometime next year but this is it for me for now. I have a feeling that this current round of sites will probably take another couple of months to completely finish but the workload right now is huge. And it’s almost Christmas. Blah.

Besides my freelance projects, I have my full-time and part-time design jobs that also keep me extremely busy. And I’ve had to neglect the part-time a lot because of the freelance. And there’s so much I could do on a weekly basis to help them out. Soon.

I think the foremost reason I’m ready to stop is because I’m not allowing myself any time to pursue other things. I want to do so much else while I live here in LA and now that I’m funding myself and paying off my debt, I need to spend my freetime pursuing those other passions. I do not want to be a one career guy but I am content doing the things I’m doing now. Maybe a little too content as I’ve overloaded myself, but life is good. I just know that if I don’t sacrifice some of this for other stuff, I’ll regret it. And I hate regrets.

The critical part of me continues to tell myself that I need to take some courses to learn programming languages (PHP, Javascript) or software (Flash) that I don’t know. It’s not that I am not able to learn this on my freetime, it’s just I don’t have enough freetime to even begin to sit down and hash it out. Not only that but the structure of a classroom where I can learn bits sequentially would highly benefit me. There are many applications of the classroom setting that I cannot stand, where it makes the material boring and mundane. But I think that learning moderately hard computing languages will take more effort and time that I can’t just sit down and dedicate (I guess the level of difficulty can be debated). Anyway, I’m not sure if this is going to be an option either.

Changes shall be made. I need them. Bad.

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Yahoo! acquires my coworkers

I’ve been working this new job for three months already. It has passed by so quickly too and I expect another three months to pass as quickly. In this short span of time, my job has gone through an immense amount of transition.

This morning, Yahoo! has announced it is purchasing upcoming.org, a project which my boss Andy Baio started a couple of years ago. When I interviewed for this job in May, I quickly realized how much of an asset Andy could be for a job in the web design world with his amazing high profile connections, but I didn’t realize how much he was potentially worth until it was too late. Now my time learning from him is cut short as he departs this job and moves to Sunnyvale working for Yahoo!. A very talented and brilliant former coworker of mine, Gorden Luk, who eventually assisted Andy on upcoming, left his job a month ago and is also on his way up.

So as you can see, my job has been through some unusual and sudden transitions as I’ve been getting to know coworkers and now having to prepare for two new coworkers and a new boss. But watching these stories as they unfold has been fascinating. Andy spent most of his freetime on upcoming for the past couple of years, and even just as a side project, his potential was realized by Yahoo! and he’s taking full advantage of this opportunity presented to him to work on some more great projects that Yahoo! has coming down the road.

There are days I wish I had been more serious in school, learning everything under the sun about programming or music or this or that. I’ve always had very ecletic tastes and, to a varying degree, talents. Thus, I would never have been able to pull something as upcoming.org off by myself or really at all! Maybe someday I’ll figure out how to realize my potential and make it big. Until that day, I continue searching for the answers.

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new job jitters

I have received lots of positive words from many people and I’m very thankful for everything that has been sent my way! I’m still just as excited and scared as I was, but am looking forward to what will happen. I realize that my evenings of consecutive late nights such as this one are quickly coming to an end. Oh how I’ll miss my evenings!

I’m excited because this next weekend I’m taking a short trip to San Francisco. I must take advantage of this free time while I have it, so it’s only natural that I cram this one last trip in before I start my job. It shall be much fun because I think I’m finally going to do all of the touristy stuff that I haven’t yet done in the city, and besides that I can also hopefully take a lot of time and get some more photos! It’s been way too long since I’ve had a photo shoot of any kind because I’ve just been way too insanely busy with so many things. Hopefully this’ll will be one of my eventual purchases with the new job’s salary.

I think one of the scariest things about taking this job is knowing that in the short run I might actually enjoy being there. I’ll never enjoy waking up early and fighting traffic all of the time, but hopefully I will enjoy going into this job each and every day so it won’t be as big of a deal. I am also happy living where I am (except for the intense heat of the summer!) and don’t really want to have to pick up and move again because I’m way too used to having to make that adjustment. But, I think that if I could find a really good deal like I have here, I’d probably have to really consider it. It’s just way too much of a drive to be making every day every week for most of the year.

Something that sorta scares me is knowing that I can’t skip a few days of work to join a friend who might be coming to town or to Vegas or SF or SD! That’s one of the best things about not having to work full-time that I enjoy doing, deciding at the last minute that I can take a trip to one of these relatively close cities and just have a ton of fun! Working this job just now means that I’ll have to fight traffic along with every other schmo who does the same thing, rather than taking the opportune times of traveling. And I’ll only have two whole days to cram most everything in, including driving or flying. But, I guess one really good thing is that if I REALLY don’t have enough time to drive, I could just hop on a plane at LAX and take off. I’ll actually be right by the airport now, be able to leave my car somewhere for free and not have to worry about too much except the cost of the plane ticket.

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it’s time

Last night, I went to a very unexpected, last minute going away party for a dear friend of mine. She called me up yesterday morning and left a message.

“Hey Micah, guess what? I’m shipping out tomorrow! So you gotta come to the party I’m having tonight. I’m so excited!!”

It was really happening; she is leaving today for the Navy boot camp, something that originally wasn’t supposed to happen until November. But a last minute opening allowed her the option to leave immediately. The decision was a no-brainer for her.

I could tell there was a huge amount of excitement as much as there was some fear. It’s a huge change; nothing will be the same in a few weeks. I’m very excited for her but I will wonder how she’s coping to this change because it’s so much so quickly.

And so as of this very moment, I, too, know the feeling. This morning, just a little while ago, I called up the HR person for a company in Santa Monica and told them I would accept a job offer as a web designer. That’s right, people, I am about to experience a complete change in lifestyle.

I’m really excited for so many reasons, but really afraid for so many others. The corporate lifestyle is not one that I’ve wanted to embrace. I’m just not much of a 9-5 person. I have always enjoyed having my own hours for so many years, doing things as I please. I’ve been blessed enough to travel a lot in the past few years, including back home to Texas to visit with everyone. But, as life’s responsibilities have increasingly continued to nip me in the ass, I realize that this is probably the next best change for me.

I am excited to be working with the web team. They seem like great people, the projects we’ll be working on sound like they’ll be a just my kind of thing, and I’m sure I’ll meet a lot of great people. I’m getting a pretty nice starting salary as well as some great benefits (at least according to many other corporate jobs, this really sounds like it’s a winner). And best of all, the beach is right across the street! :o)

I believe the best is yet to come! I’ve had some fun rides in the past few years, I have been to many wonderful, really fun places around the US and world, but now is time to provide myself the means and opportunity to make the rest of my dreams come true. Don’t be a stranger, because I see a lot of really fun and interesting changes coming my way and you’ll wanna read all about them!

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new job!

My 2nd week on the job, and it’s going very well! I started a new job last Tuesday in Hollywood. I work for a company which sells gift baskets to the Hollywood/LA area and it’s such a great place to work! Although I hold no official title, I work on web design, programming for different medias and database entry and coding.

This is only a part time job, doesn’t offer the essential benefits I so sorely need, but it’s a great start. I will now have the means to begin to support myself as well as saving for the future. I can also continue to train myself for future web projects and prepare for more web design work. Once we make some changes to the website, I will probably plug the website on here. But until that time, I shall let it remain anonymous.

So what does this mean for me? That I’ve gotta take this seriously, work the hours that I need and start to figure out how to hold up for the future. I’m not giving up on the music, that’s why I moved out here. But at the moment, at this period of time, it’s just not viable for me to pursue anything else. I think it’s important to take advantage of opportunities presented to you, and this was definitely something I needed to pursue.

So why has the music thing not worked out? There are many reasons, some of which are my fault. I was not persistent enough, not contacting those in the industry to find some work as much as I should have. I did not follow up, try to network with other people enough. I spent most of my time doing other things that kept my interest. And I have not consistently been around the area, taking many trips to Texas, Colorado and Germany in the past few months. These reasons are all my accountability for my situation. And I have no regrets (especially Germany!). The main reasons, in my opinion, for my lack of jobs in the music industry is because of bad timing, not knowing the right people at the right time, and just not being in the right situation. Timing and networking are extremely important in the entertainment industry. Talent counts for like 5-10%. Looks are about 10-15%. And timing and networking are the rest. It’s sad, but true.

So now I look forward to this new time as I adjust, as I figure out my next moves. It’s not always the easiest way to live life but I’m used to it now. Hopefully things will change but if it stays this way a while, I won’t complain too much.

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making a living

I’m back from my week of Hollywood excitement. It was a busy week as I kept myself doing as much as I could sightseeing lots of things.

So what was my purpose in Los Angeles? Originally, I wanted it to be a vacation where I could visit lots of people working in the music/movie industry practicing audio engineering in one form or another. I was hoping to see a few sessions, some with recording and scoring, some with post production. What I actually saw was a 2 hours post production section. It confirmed that the one class that I don’t enjoy as much is the one class that I really need to get something out of the most. Isn’t that ironic…

I’m also a few years away from even thinking about living and working in a more mainstream market. I need experience. I know many of the technical reasons why certain things are done, but practicing and implementing these reasons takes experience I don’t have. And I’m glad that it’s early enough for me to realize this. So now it’s on to finding a job somewhere that I can make a comfortable living.

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