The first MICMNGT session was actually a bit disconcerting. I suppose I could blame it on lack of sleep or breakfast, but I was sure of one thing. I learned a whole lot about myself and the organizations I have been in from that one particular session. There was one huge PowerPoint page that struck me most:

Every transition begins with an ending. We have to let go of the old before we can pick up the new, not just outwardly but inwardly.

This summoned a question that has been dancing on my mind for ages: "Am I really ready to elevate my status in the corporate ladder?" I had been a leader most of my life: a chairperson in my academic organization, the lead contact in many of my projects, the head admin of my web communities, and even the coordinator for most offline/online events I have been active in. It took a couple of career shifts -- from the web to game development, which made me shift from middle management to rank and file again -- to make me realize that I had a lot to learn. And it took this particular session to make me realize that I had a lot to unlearn before I could learn the new stuff.

For starters, I used to be the typical leader who was bossy (and not in a good way) and thought that anger or showing superiority over people are what would define my leadership. Being a geek -- and I don't mean this literally in the IT sense, but more in the sense pertaining to the stuff I am good at -- didn't help that much at all. In fact, because of the geeky attitude, there was a certain way I wanted things done. I would get frustrated because people either could not cope with my style or they were just used to doing things differently. I would also end up doing most of the work due to my discontentment, which kind of defeats the purpose of having a team to work with. People worked mostly because they were afraid of me, and not because I motivated them to do their best. Back then, the organization wasn't a living organism. In my eyes, it was merely a hive of drones. I do recognize this as one of the major AFIs that I'm already working on, which is why I had to unlearn nearly every aspect of the way I do things.

Secondly, that sensitivity test told me that I was the kind of person who's too OC about the minor details that there are times I'd fail to look at the bigger picture. When I make a project timeline, do I begin with the little details, or do I give myself a huge plot to work with and just adjust the schedule when it's time to deal with the little details? Come to think of it, life would be easier if I start from the overview and then work my way into the nitty gritties rather than do stuff that in the end aren't necessary to begin with.

Thirdly, I realize that my path is shifting again. I used to be one of the people who understood the ins and outs of coding, and I also used to be one of the people who get obsessive about every pixel in their designs. (I was still in school and my sister was only 12 years old when we both began creating websites.) It is getting kind of exhausting, especially when I have to deal with the fact that I am gearing towards marketing and coordination, and not focusing much on the technical aspects anymore. I am actually letting go of that side of me, especially when it doesn't take a genius to know that in the IT industry, you -- like every other technological gadget out there -- will eventually become outdated. IT people get younger every year, and the programming languages they learn are newer. I don't see myself competing with that anymore.

I guess it's mostly about evolution. People evolve, so the organizations they belong to also evolve. Organizations have life because of the people in them and the leaders that run them. I mean, just look at Bill Gates. We all know that he was one of the ultimate tech geeks. But do you suppose he's still focused on the programming aspects of his empire? Somehow, I doubt it. He seems to have "upgraded" from being The Geek, to being The Businessman who hires geeks. Still, running an organization isn't a task that one man can do alone. He became the mother, and the empire his sons and daughters. Whatever growing the mother did, so too did the children.

Hm. Fascinating. I could actually use this as a guide post in tracking my own career. Recognizing where I am currently at -- technical level, behavioral level and so on -- will make it easier for me to direct my path upwards.

I made a check list of the features I want in a husband. I never realized that I could use a check list of what I want in a job until my mom and I discussed about what I really want to do. She could see that I'm completely happy and fulfilled about my sites, but there are also other needs that I wanted to address so that I wouldn't be so restless. I wish I had talked to my mom this way 5 years ago, at the height of my career, so that I didn't have to choose between marriage and the job that I had found ideal.

Of course, past is past. All I can do now is look to my future and see what could be fixed, starting with my career path. I learned something like this in my SOCDIM class, the diagram of organizational components a.k.a. Information Ecology. It was only after talking to my mom that I realized I could use this diagram in my personal life also.

Another thing I realized is this: Even though I have designed many pages (around 32 as of this writing...I think) and still doing many projects, my strength isn't really in design. Sure, I can whip up a neat, pretty website when I am in my "Design Mode" but I notice that I'm more like an outline-organize-design-build-market-maintain-market-maintain type of person. That's how it is with my babies, my network, that I've never grown tired of: The Otaku Fridge.

My mom said, now that I have established that the Otaku Fridge Network is an important aspect of my life (hey, it's one of the projects that pay my masteral tuition), I should find a job that lets me have time for this. Sure, I do want to have my own business, and I might go after a job solely for the purpose of finding capital, but I still have to have an outline as to what I really want to do. That way, I could retain the job, as well as the Fridge and the business.

Hm. Is it any wonder that my mom was VP for HR in San Miguel Brewing Group's Greater China Operations?



My Career Check List:

• Must meet my financial requirements. While this wasn't the case when I went back to the corporate world last year (because I was forcing my way out of "Housewife Mode" and needed a job pronto), I realize that I'm not getting any younger and life can't all be just about fun. Survival isn't enough. I have to LIVE.



• Must let me be a mentor so that I can train and educate people. I get fulfillment out of this, based on past experience.



• Must allow me to travel and experience worlds beyond where I'm standing.



• Must allow me to have enough time for The Otaku Fridge. Meaning, I should have enough time for myself so that I don't end up taking maintenance tablets come age 30.



• Must allow me to grow and learn, like letting me study a new language or discover a new marketing strategy.



• Must inspire me to be more creative in my pursuits.



• Must make my strengths flourish. I just observed that while I'm not as good as many witty, grammatically perfect and overly creative writers out there -- nor am I a design machine like Leki, Virna, Elly and Diwa -- I am good at branding and finding my niche. Writing and designing are just basic tools of the trade, which is, in essence, information management. I think the job I should take would be able to help me hone that further.

Now, I'm tying this up with my personal goals, which include my Husband Check List, so that I would have an overview as to how I want to direct my life. I realize also that career choices are a lot like love. "Until you love like this, never settle for anything less," LeAnne Rimes said. LOL! If I have to use a gantt chart and a master diagram to accomplish this, so be it. =^.^=

Reading about a friend's livejournal post about Sailormoon being a sissy's anime, and my sister's response to it, I just realized that my sister was right! This was what she said:

haha! naoko had a deal with the devil! i swear, first time i saw sailormoon, i was laughing my ass off. then a few months later everything turned upside down and the unexplainable happened...an addiction began, and it lasted for four years and launched my web career. XD

sailormoon is scary!

O...kay. Any guy in IT would know Ben Goodger, right? You'd know him...right? If you don't, you can merely Google his name and it'd show you that he's the head engineer for Mozilla Firefox. In other words, he was a pioneer in the invention of a whole new browser.

Now, for those who do not know (or maybe it's because Mr. Goodger hid it well), Ben Goodger was a complete Sailormoon fanatic back in the 90s. I remember that we'd spend countless times in forums arguing about Sailormoon and web designing -- in no particular order -- and we'd have factions and other such juvenile quarrels that newbies to the internet were prone to doing back then. His fascination for tweaking with Netscape settings rose because he was trying to make his Sailormoon stylesheets work. I think that led to his being hired by Netscape, and eventually spearheading Firefox. Yep, that Millenium website of his? It was originally inspired by the Silver Millenium -- the era when Sailormoon existed as Princess Serenity.

Freaky?

Well. My sister Thundersenshi, my cousin Firesenshi and I, Skysenshi, all got our web, photography and design careers launched by Sailormoon. It's obvious from our monickers -- all based on Sailor Senshi names -- which got stuck from almost a decade of usage. I mean, sure, we can be called sissies or dorks for liking an anime with leggy teenagers in sailor outfits and plot holes that outnumber the characters in the Chinese alphabet. Laugh all you want! But one thing's for sure...

We have Naoko Takeuchi to thank for beginning our careers.