Introduction
Hello SCN Community,
We are who we are, accepting who you are and being yourself is the best way to move forward.
Ke$ha
Although I wanted to write a technical blog this time, I ended up writing this one. The title of the blog is the title of one of the latest songs of Ke$ha. For those who don't know Ke$ha, she is a young pop star with a serious twist. I didn't really find her that interesting when she started to release songs but after I had found some background information and listened to a few interviews she did I like her for being her.
One of the stories I like is how she broke into the domain of Prince to hand over a demo of her songs. On her way in she got stuck under the fence, had to bribe the gardener but in the end she was able to drop her demo in the house. After which she was escorted out by security.
Relation to SCN
Why is this blog related to SCN? I like being an active contributor on SCN, I like helping people, and I like writing blogs and so on. I made some great connections already by being active on SCN. It is always a pleasure to meet people and connect. I like happy people, I like being happy and I love laughing.
Recently I got some negative vibes towards me sharing knowledge and blogging on SCN. Suspicions where I manage to have time to write blogs, assumptions why I do what I do. I don't plan to stop doing what I'm doing so perhaps I convert some of the negative vibes into positive vibes.
Hold your horses
It's never a good idea to jump to conclusions, being too fast in making conclusions can make you burn your fingers (don't know if it's a saying in English but it is in Dutch).
For those who really want to know where I manage to have time to write blogs and do my work, spend time with my family and my girlfriend and two little children (Caitlin, age 2 and Colin who is 6 months old) I will elaborate a bit.
Time management
I sleep very solid, like a rock but I don't sleep much. I end up being tired around 11pm and most of the times I wake up at 4:45am. I drive to work at around 5am where I arrive at 5:30am (no traffic jams for me) and spent around 2 hours learning, reading on SCN, listening music and creating blogs.
My work day is often from 7:30am till 4pm as overtime is not allowed most of the times. I drive home at 4pm to arrive at 5pm (thanks to traffic jams) to pick up my two children. Then my family time starts, watching and playing with my two little children, cleaning up stuff and so on. I like being around people so we often have visitors and we also often visit family and friends.
Once my children are asleep which is most of the time around 7:30pm. Then there is time for entertainment (watching television, a movie, playing a board game or playing a game of Fifa 2010 on the Wii against my girlfriends' dad). It also happens that I'm doing work related things again after 7:30pm like testing things, writing blogs or helping people on the SCN forum, whatever I feel up to at that particular moment.
There are some interesting talks on TED about work-life balance and sleep:
Nigel Marsh: How to make work-life balance work.
Arianne Huffington: How to succeed? Get more sleep.
Busy bee
I like being busy, I don't like sitting around doing nothing. A job where I would have to sit and watch for eight hours sounds like a seat in hell to me. Where I can find some free time slots I like cycling (in the woods or on the road). I can also enjoy manual labor (although I'm not so handy), working on the house which I bought together with my girlfriend some years ago which still needs work.
No need to hide
There is no need to hide who you are, trying to be someone you are not won't help you and will only make you tired. I don't have enough sleep to get more tired so I am who I am. This will inevitably cause some to like you and others to dislike you.
Envy
Envy is often right around the corner. There will always be someone who is more connected, someone that earns more money, someone that is better than you and so on. Let it go, really, instead of channeling bad energy, use that energy to produce art.
Love what you do
My motto is always I have to love what I do. If I don't love my job, it's better to find another job. A job is a big part of your life. Most spend at least 8 hours a day on doing their job. I tend to spend at least 11 hours doing things related to my job and SAP. Why? I love it.
Helping people
I have always had the urge to help people out. It's not a choice anymore, it has become part of who I am. I did it in school, explaining others how programming works (I graduated as a developer) and I didn't stop once I started working. I spend the first few years doing a massive amount of work hours, most of my colleagues were concerned I would crash because I was so hyperactive. I had some problems with a muscle in my right leg but it was due to too much fitness, I tend to get fanatic at things up to the edge of addiction where I take a small step back to avoid addiction.
Knowledge sessions
The firm where I started, Core Consulting had knowledge events every other month to keep the consultants up to date and those sessions had presentations which were done by the consultants also. A great initiative in my opinion, I liked it from the start, although I didn't understand much when I started working as I only knew you could do Enterprise Resource Planning with SAP and one of the first presentations was about a Unicode migration and codepage conversions (I still remember).
Solution Manager
Once I had spent some time doing SAP, I caught the vibe that Solution Manager would become an important topic as a Basis Administrator. So I started by contributing content in separate SAP Solution Manager sessions and later on I started scheduling in such sessions myself and getting content and people to contribute. I received some questions from junior administrators on what I found to be important topics. I still believe that Solution Manager is one of the most important products to have know-how on as an administrator. It is already important and it will become more important.
Security related topics
On the same note, everything which is related to security is also becoming more and more important. There is more and more demand for securing software, using SSL, using token authentication and so on so if you seek out area's that are important and will become more important, it's good area to move in.
Jumping to SCN
I quickly discovered SCN when I started working in SAP (I started in July 2006). Only recently the idea came to me to try and write a single blog (the initial idea) to see if it would be a fun thing to do. I already knew I like sharing knowledge. After doing so and liking it I wrote some more blogs and I got connected to people which I very much appreciate. Then I noticed more of my colleagues were actually picking up my content on SCN compared against the internal Wiki where I also contributed information. I could also get my information more widely spread, helping not only my colleagues but also other people.
Hair failure
I like telling stories so I have to share the story of my profile picture on SCN. I got tired of having to switch from one hairdresser to the other. Because of that I asked my girlfriend to buy a hair clipper. Those who read my blog "To read or not to read the manual, that's the question" know I don't always read the manual. My girlfriend did but I guess she used the index and skipped an important part. The result was my hair was cut to 1 mm. Once you have a line of hair cut with a hair clipper, there is no way back.
The reason for the hair cut was that we were going out to celebrate the 80th birthday of my grand-dad. At the restaurant we had fun laughing with my hair failure and someone took a picture of me without me knowing that a picture was being taken. It's the story behind the picture why I like the picture, I don't look that good with such short hair but the picture makes me smile, the story behind it pops up whenever I see it.
End-note
I like laughing and having fun, I love what I do and I will continue to do it. We are who we are and I am who I am.
Helping out people, sharing knowledge and blogging is what I have to do. It's not something you should do for self benefit. It might result in self benefit (getting connected, learning more and so on) but that is not the drive.
You don't have to love me but if you dislike me, you should have at least read this blog to know why I do what I do.
