Appraisal and thoughts

Those self-reflecting questions really a cold water splash on my face. I just received my first appraisal over 4 years of work. It's my first job and first time to have it but it keeps me thinking about my career and situation.

Thought about life work balance?

In general, it's a good life work balance as I work 2 days at home per week. However, when I need to go to the office there's no more free time left for myself. The commuting time is annoyingly long and one way is about one hour and a half, and usually I'm too tired to do anything else.

What I really want?

After answered some of the questions in the appraisal, which I don't usually think about in daily life, I started to think about what I really want in my career:

• I want to create value by sharing my knowledge, experience, and part of life.
• I want to have full control of my time, balance between my personal life and my career, each day I should have some parts of both.
• I want to get paid properly by my sharing, enough to pay my bills.
• I want to work for my own business/career, eventually.
• I want my work continuously creates values for others, maybe like this blog, open to everyone thus helps anyone who read it.

What I have now?

• I'm currently a developer for an open source software. The job itself aligns with my goal to create values for others.

• However, it's not my own business, at least not yet. Since I already have some experience in this software, my own business can be based on it:

  1. create lessons to teach people how to contribute to it;
  2. customize the software for clients;

• I don't have full control of my time as an employee, so I should eventually create my own company and work in the best way for myself.

• I get paid by my contribution to the company, but it's not directly from the client to me. I also have some financial struggle once in a while, so I need to get more sustainable way getting paid.

• my work continuously create values, but through my employer. The mode of my work must be changed, e.g. own my own career.

Final words

Well, it's indeed something serious, for myself that's no doubt. But I do need to make a change, bit by bit!