How in the hell do I get free of information technology?

You are right and my wife says this thing is going to kill me, since this morning, I have put out a 3 hour fire with BMW, fought with Fandango over disk space issues, Bit on the Wire all kinds a little crap, and then all the pop-up crap in between. I think you are a Nut if you ever want to get into IT.

I need to go to the gym.

Too much computer time is enough to drive anyone nuts. You definitely need to take more frequent breaks. I work online so am on the computer at least 10 hours a day and I find making sure I get up every couple of hours helps me keep my sanity. I find getting outside and getting some fresh air does wonders for my temperament. I use to get my son to take the dogs out when I was working, but I learned doing it myself was a great stress relief. I get to stretch my legs and get some fresh air and the dogs always make me smile. No more headaches.

I have been on this computer working issues off and on since 6 AM, it is now 6 PM, I hope to leave here soon. I am tired and my head hurts.

I went through a mid-life crisis about being in IS/IT. One of my early interests was pharmacology. I was always good at chemistry and was fascinated in medicines. When I looked at how long it would take to become a pharmacist I realized at my age it just wasn’t going to happen.

I was pretty bummed in the early naughts. All of my coworkers who I liked to work with were either forced into early retirement or laid off and those of us who remained were expected to do twice as much work as before. I never got along with a VP of one of our divisions and due to his pressure my boss was trying to build a case to fire me. At one point I got written up because our monitoring software didn’t alert when a mirrored drive failed and I didn’t magically catch it on my own and another time I got written up after finding and fixing a problem that everybody else missed because they said I should have found it sooner. I knew they were on the verge of firing me when I quit getting any projects or trouble tickets. One time one of my coworkers had already worked over 24 hours straight and my boss wouldn’t let her call me in so she could go home. I guess as far as he was concerned I was already a dead man walking.

As bad as things were I figured out it was up to me whether they got better or worse. I called in some favors and the people who appreciated my work started sticking up for me and before long the whole thing blew over. I later learned that when the VP who didn’t like me started badmouthing me at one of their meetings people jumped in and reminded him how many times I saved their bacon over the years. The way I see it I do something that I’m good at and not everyone can do. Every job has its ups and downs but in the end just knowing you did a good job and that somebody appreciates goes a long way.

This is very true, and while I am not the highest produce where I work, I do work through the issues that no one wants. the things that can’t be fixed in a few minutes. I have been recognized for this many times that I fix the problem, I don’t just address the issue. Yes I am getting burnt out of direct IT support, but I do have options, right now I have just interviewed in my company for a project management position. My BS is in network communications management, and the Masters I am working on is for Project Management. I have talked this over with my current manager and he said I should go for it, but he reminded me that I always have a job in his department.

Organization isn’t my strong suit so I don’t think Project Management is for me but it seems to be a good area to get into. In my company the role of project managers keeps changing and the turnover of project managers is high. I have a bachelor’s in Computer Science and opted not to get my masters because CS gets so theoretical in grad school that I didn’t see it helping me much. I considered a MS in interdisciplinary studies in business, CS, and Information Science though. At this point getting some certifications would probably help my career more than another academic degree.