The job I always wanted

 

I have always considered myself lucky that I not only knew what I wanted to do in general when I grew up, but I also got the opportunity to pursue the interests that tie into that career.  When I was about 10, my father brought home our first real personal computer, complete with scanner and printer.  The PC was a custom Equus build from a local PC store.  I can remember exploding with curiosity about this machine and what it did, it was just so much cooler than our Commodore64!  My father would tell me that I could only use the computer with his supervision, but that quickly changed when he realized that I was obsessed with it.  Not long after, we got dial-up internet set up with AOL.  This was right around the time that the internet was born from ARPAnet, so it was something I had never heard of and wasn't familiar with.  I suddenly had access to all the information I could want, or at least that's what it felt like.  

It was at this point in life that I knew I had to learn everything I could about how computers worked.  I wanted to learn it all, software, hardware, even the electronic components.  I wanted to learn down to the atomic level what was going on inside this magical box of wisdom and fun.  Not long after, I took a computer class in middle school and fell even more in love with PCs.  I had an amazing teacher that fostered my creativity and helped shaped me to the person I am today.

I grew up with the same passion.  I went to college for 8 years and obtained 3 different degrees.  After getting my associate's degree in computer science, I jumped right into electronics engineering.  I finished it off with a degree in information security.  By the time I had my last degree, I had been in the IT industry for 4 years.  It was a very difficult journey to start, but it was worth every difficulty, trial, and tribulation.

The final phase of my career was to discover exactly what I wanted to do, under the umbrella of IT careers.  I got what I consider my first IT job by luck.  I was working in construction as a tower climber and heavy equipment operator and worked on a job for the government and learned that this agency needed a tower climber to install last-mile wireless radios.  While I was in that position, I was given opportunities to take trainings, most notably Cisco networking training.  I instantly fell in love and figured out that I wanted to work in networking.  From that point, I knew that I wanted to work in networking for the rest of my career.

The most amazing part was that my career didn't end with networking.  I realized over time that I wanted not only to network but also protect the network and run services on the network. Now I'm proficient in server administration, containerization, network security, cloud networking, and several other areas, all because I wanted to learn how things ON the network worked, not just the network. 

Finding your passion is something that I have never really been able to answer easily, because I simply fell into what I ended up loving.  I can tell you that the key to my success in my career has always been about curiosity and ownership.  I'm always willing to learn new things and I'm willing to take responsibility for the quality of my work, because I put my passion into my work.

If you want to do something you love, learn to truly love the work you do, be accountable for the work you perform and what you create, and be willing to change with time.