“Yes, time to break those limitations.”
Mulling over my future in what has been the best job I’ve ever had, a colleague and friend wrote the above to me. For some reason, those words resonated with me and helped seal my decision.
With a soon-to-be 6 month old son and a young family, the decision to let go of a highly paid Pacific regional job that had all the perks of security, status, travel, and challenging work certainly wasn’t easy especially going into the uncertainty of consulting and entrepreneurship. To many who know me, it was irresponsible but to a few, like the friend that sent me that line, they understood. It helped to have a very understanding and supportive wife and mother to my child too.
Now, when I think of work and what that means or when I’m told I need to get a job to go to an office 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, it mildly annoys me. Work is what you make of it. That was the first limitation I had to break.
A handshake and a paddle
And just like that, 5.5 years with the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) based in Honiara, Solomon Islands came to an end with a handshake and the symbolic signing of the paddle. Not only to paddle away from FFA but to paddle back to it in the future, apparently.
If you’re not looking for it, you probably won’t see it
Interestingly, once I’d made the decision to leave FFA a whole new world of possibilities opened up. I was seeing more opportunities. The relationships I had cultivated over the years through my work and…umm, let’s call it “networking”…was responding positively with the change. Even with a few consulting opportunities.
Of course, having opportunities and taking advantage of them are very different things but the veil of limitations on what was possible was lifted for me.
All of this was positively reinforcing of my decision although I wonder whether it’s a case of seeing what I want to believe instead. Time will tell. In this unfamiliar situation I’ve found it necessary to have nothing but self-belief in what I’ve set out to do. It’s a choice to take a situation and look at it positively and see the potential.
Re-engaging with my craft
One drawback about taking an ICT managerial role is that sometimes you have to disengage from what you do best and for me that was designing and building usable database and information systems. And everything else that went with that especially engaging with the people that would use it.
It’s quite something to see people’s faces light up when they use a new system that works exactly like how they described it to you. In the Pacific, it almost seems magical. And you’re the Magician.
The coming weeks and months will be about pushing further to break more limitations with a priority on re-engaging with my craft and also learning about the wonderful world of entrepreneurship.
What excites me the most about it is that there is just so much to learn! Laravel, AWS, Ionic, Angular, traceability, CDS, PSMA, blockchain, AI, etc etc…it’s a long list.
Blogging virgin
This is my first blog post – another limitation lost (no pun intended). In between establishing myself as a consultant, starting a business, and learning a whole heap of cool stuff I’ll try my best to write regularly. Not daily, weekly, or monthly but regularly.
Kenneth Katafono 