Category: Essays

Flight of the Ideator: The Offseason

As you may or may not have gathered, I’m an NFL football fan and I enjoy making analogies to my favourite sport whenever possible. There I was on January 12th, 2017… after nearly five years of fulltime employment, sacked from my blindside and out of the game. Flushed into the offseason and a rebuilding process. Of course, that wasn’t clear right away.

It’s been just under a year since things took a turn for the better: social media have been reminding me of anniversaries of the milestones on my flight. So, in the next few installments of this series, I want to share some of the insights I was having as I adjusted to unemployment. Flight of the Ideator: The Offseason (cont.)

25 Random Facts… 9 Years Later

So, with the occasional exception, I enjoy Facebook telling me what happened On this Day and the invitation to re-visit posts of the past. Lately, I was seeing references to a Facebook note “challenge” of sorts that was making the rounds NINE YEARS AGO. *Marty crawls into a hole and dies* “25 Random Facts” did what it said on the tin and you were supposed to tag 25 people in it and keep the ball rolling. Today is the anniversary of when I posted mine. Here’s what I shared then and my thoughts on that sharing now.

Join me as I judge my past self, won’t you?

25 Random Facts… 9 Years Later (cont.)

Flight of the Ideator: No Goodbyes

I’ve now worked for two companies that lease several floors in an office tower. Some employees use the building’s elevator to move between floors. I get the impression it’s not unusual to also have a fancy internal staircase, which fits the company’s interior decoration scheme and might be used by staff and accompanied visitors/clients alike. My favourite means of getting around a multi-floor office is via a fire escape stairwell. They’re quiet, almost always empty, and using them gives me the feeling of being a Downton Abbey-esque servant, making the operation run but being invisible (in a good, efficient cog-in-the-machine way – not in a self-devaluing feeling-underappreciated way). Flight of the Ideator: No Goodbyes (cont.)

Flight of the Ideator: Calling For Change

It was just after four on a grey Wednesday in January. I was sitting at my desk, filling the last hours of my day with doing those little niggling tasks that remind you it’s a job. Not a dream, not a calling, not a passion. Not a career. And then my phone rang.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that day. And I’ve spent a lot of time thinking since that day. I’ve looked at it through each of the lenses of the stages of grief. As I write my way through this Flight of the Ideator series, I may not be able to do all of them justice because I’ve come out the other side, but I’m grateful for your continued curiosity. Flight of the Ideator: Calling For Change (cont.)

Flight of the Ideator: A Prologue

I’m a Leo. I was born in the Year of the Ram. I’m an ENFJ. Despite any suggestions to the contrary, I belong in Ravenclaw (the hat’s opinion may differ at first, but my intent would be taken into consideration, dammit).

There are a lot of fun labels for me and the way I am. I seek them out. I mean, I don’t submit myself to every one of those surveys that get posted on Facebook, but once in a while the results are amusing and can serve as good smalltalk fodder or, honestly, something to post to my timeline as “proof of life”. Flight of the Ideator: A Prologue (cont.)