2012 was Squirrels and Bacon

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2012 has been, without a doubt, the most exciting year since I walk around this globe. There have been other years that had higher or lower peaks but this one flipped everything upside down. Up to this year things have gradually grown on me like every “normal” person has. I changed jobs a few times, got up the ladder a few times in that process. Things just went fine for me.

Squirrels:
‘Fine’ is not really the best description here. I quit school at 18 and went to work the day after. I had 3 different jobs in the graphical world, all with the same employer but each time one step up. I followed a 4 years Networking Engineer Bachelor program in adult school (quit right before the end of it for personal reasons) and then had 4 different jobs in IT with VARs, each time 1 step up again. Starting to see a pattern here?

Something changed this year. As a Solutions Team Lead I had more responsibilities as before. Until that day someone else was responsible for my schedule and even for handling mistakes I would have made. Although my, sometimes very ‘out-of-the-box’, designs were good, I never got my files correct and on time. When you are in a (pre)sales supporting role this is very crucial to your job and the company. This is called procrastination 🙂

At a certain point one of my managers, whom I truly see as a personal friend, gave me a tip that I should read some things on AD(H)D. I saw it first as a joke but he meant it and I got that hint. This has been a life changer since that day! I read a few blogposts and very shortly after that I noticed I had 99% of all symptoms to have AD(H)D. I bought books and finally I did go to a psychiator and psychologist to have it diagnosed.
I won’t go very much into details here but I did hit a wall, and very hard, when this came reality. This explained 31 years of my life. But knowing now really helps. Small example: my wife knows now that if she asks me to do something and it doesn’t happen right away it will never happen. We already knew that before but now she knows I did not forget on purpose, I was not lazy on purpose. So now she just asks it again without being annoyed and I get the questions more than once without thinking she’s annoying 🙂 Other things we changed is that don’t promise any works around the house anymore. We get things done now by others. Although that costs a bit more: it gets done! We live a lot happier now and that is a really good result.



I am still figuring out a lot and I might do some charity work in this area later. Talking at schools for teachers, maybe a TEDx talk. But I need some more research for that first. One thing that I already want to give to you all: DO NOT DISMISS AD(H)D AS A JOKE! It really is a bigger deal than you can imagine. I made that mistake myself.


Bacon:
A second big thing that changed was my daily activities. I really got sucked into Enterprise IT this year. This was not organic growth anymore. This was major leaps forward. I blog here for 4 years now, lived on forums and twitter (remember that 24/7 brain I have). I have learned a lot by just being there online so much, reading stuff and communicating with others. And then came the physical events. First I got invited by HP (dec 2011) to come over as a blogger to HP Discover in Vienna and in that same week the invite for DELL Storage Forum in London arrived. These two events were catalysers for everything that followed. The biggest catalyser after that was Storage TechFieldDay1. I still feel very humble being asked to join these grey-beards and brainiacs of storage.



But then came the ADD thing. I found out that I was failing in my role (as Team Lead). But after the fact that I knew now that just trying harder to be/look less lazy was not going to help … I resigned. At that point the explanation was that the job did not fit my expectations anymore, now you know the other reason. I pursued the search for a role that fits my personality more rather than something I might be good at if I just try hard enough. I found that role as Evangelist at Veeam. These guys gave a crazy opportunity and it has been a roller coaster since I joined in august. I have visited half of Europe, have met a hundreds of interesting people AND I get to do something I truly enjoy: being passionate and talk to people about that passion. THIS is what I am really good at. I will never be a good salesman because I’ll forget to call you back to close the deal. I’ll never be a good architect because I will make smaller and bigger mistakes due to lack of focus. But I will be the most honest guy in the room as I lack the possibility of lying to you (I wouldn’t even remember my lies). And I will be the most passionate guy you can put in a room and share thoughts with. Veeam gives me this chance every day now and I am truly grateful for that opportunity.


2013 predictions:
If you look back to all that happened in just one year I will not even try to do predictions for 2013. I can only tell you that I’ll give myself for 100% in being passionate.



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