Leaving the comfort zone

date: Aug 12th, 2011

Hello guys, first of all I would like to apologize, I know it has been a while since the last time I've published something, I completely forgot about my website, I've badly answered some questions people made me during the last months. I'm sorry; this is not being a easy moment, many things happening at the same time.

I've been extremely busy during the last months; working up to 16 hours per day and not enjoying much many of the things I was doing, this is not all about feeling tired and exhausted, this is about something else. Basically I've been working on many things simultaneously parallel to my full-time job at central London where I've been working so far almost 5 years. For a while I've been getting interested in outside house things, working in some personal projects, doing research on things that don't have any relevant application to my real job, unfortunately all this made me feel overloaded and mainly very tired. Sadly I ended up on these days with one very simple question but constantly hammering my head; Why am I giving top priority to things outside work? Why are more important the things I am doing outside than my full-time job, If my full-time job is the one that gives me the "real potato". I am not entire sure about the answer for this question but what I am completely sure is that the people who I work with don't deserve being disrespected, they are making a big effort to achieve whatever they are aiming to and I just can't give them the best of me any longer. I just realized that for long time I haven't grown into the company structure, I am exactly the same employee who I was 2 years ago intellectually and professionally, that's maybe the answer for many of my questions, I think it is really important to detect when things are restarting over and over again (in a loop) like a scratched vinyl. Although it wasn't an easy decision to make a couple of weeks ago I have decided to resign, and I did it.

There is a quite complicated story behind all this, especially because we are never totally sure about the right moment for leaving our jobs, even more now with all this eternal recession subject, unsatisfied people getting crazy on the streets (London riots), many out there unemployed, etc. But the truth is that there is never a proper moment for it, this is like when we want to break up a very long relationship, there is always something that makes us step back, especially our memories, ho god, how much time of our life spent at our jobs? 60% of our time awake?

Some of you are asking yourselves, what do I do for living? Well, I am a flash programmer since 98, but later on I got involved within the gambling industry in 2003 (when I used to live in Brazil) working in C++ making maths for cabinets "offline bingo games" and then when I moved to the UK (winter 2006) because of my previous experience, my destiny was carry on working in the gambling industry till now. The company where I work for, makes gambling "casino games" for different operators like William Hill, Ladbrokes, etc. I have learned a lot from this, there is a crazy science behind all this, especially if you're dealing with algorithms in the frontend simulating results that were processed ages ago in the backend. Do you remember my first article "predicting the landing position"? Anyway, this is it, enough for me; it is now time to flip over this page of the book of my career and move on to the next stage. August is my notice period at my current job.

Are you up for a beer at FOTB 2011?

Well, Flash On The Beach was always a very good event for getting inspired and mainly for networking. This year I am going to be there all days, attending all the good and bad sessions. By chance if you're going to this event, do not hesitate in contact me, send me an email, let's catch up there at any time, let's have a beer during the intervals and/or at the end of each day, cheers in advanced.

I would like to share with you an amazing video someone sent me recently, it is called "surprising truth about what motivates us" take a look, it really worth http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc


date: 06 Sep 2011 - 03:06:58, published by Gerson
Nice blog, some informative stuff on flash which i was looking at the first place! Good luck at whatever you're doing!
date: 20 Jan 2012 - 14:52:13, published by petene
I wish I could do the same, good luck!