Orson’s story.
I’ll start things off with my own story.
I’m Orson, and almost exactly 12 years ago, I shifted from a small town in a small country to a bigger town, a city, the country’s capital, about 200km south. Not a huge move, by anyone’s standards, but significant nonetheless.
Where I was living was a university town, full of educational facilities, and not a lot else. I’d dropped out of university about 4 years before, but had never got around to moving away. I’d worked in IT as much as I could – helpdesk, then retail sales, a little bit of contract web development, some ISP sysadmin for a very small local ISP that was on its financial last legs (and had been for months). I was in a relationship that was in its final days – to a certain extent, we both knew it, but hadn’t formally ended things yet – relationship inertia at its finest.
I was chatting with a friend online – idly bitching about being poor, unemployed, hating my life… all that good stuff, and he said something along the lines of “Get your ass down here. There’s work if you’re prepared to look for it. I have a couch that’s yours for a few weeks while you get your feet on the ground. Just do it.”
This was the trigger event. The metaphorical kick in the ass I needed to break me out of the rut of low self-worth and complete non-motivation. Momentum applies to a body at rest just as much as it does a body in motion. I was at rest, and had been at rest for some time – I needed something to start me moving.
On April 26th 1998, less than a week after that conversation, I moved from Palmerston North to Wellington, New Zealand with $80 in the bank, a suitcase, and a computer. Oh, and about $5000 in debt. The sum of my worldly possessions – a net negative.
I bought a newspaper, I started applying for jobs – anything that I could do. IT work was preferred (there was plenty of low level IT work around), but I was deliberately open to anything. During that first week, I sent out around 15 job applications, attended something like 5 job interviews. The following Monday, I had two phone calls, one after the other. One, telling me that i was formally single. The other telling me I had a job. I started the next day.
Shift work – IT operations and helpdesk. Day shift for the first two weeks, then rostered shifts after that. Hourly rate contract – I got paid for the hours I worked. I was guaranteed a minimum of 80 hours a fortnight, but after the first two weeks, there wasn’t a single fortnight where i worked less than 110 hours. I covered shifts for other people, worked double shifts straight through, at one stage I did 6 weeks, 7 days a week of graveyard shifts – 8 hours a night on week days, 12 hours a night on weekends.
After 6 months, I handed in my notice, with 8 weeks of expenses in the bank. I decided to spend 4 weeks finding a great job – and if I failed at that, I still had 4 weeks to find any job.
3 weeks later, I started in a new position at the New Zealand Stock Exchange. My job title was “IT Generalist”. I did everything that came up. I was there for almost 4 and a half years. I met she who became my future wife there. I made contacts, friends, and learned an incredible amount – not just about IT, but also how to be a good employee, how to work in a team, and how to be a team leader.