Been almost two months since I visited my blog, wow. As mentioned in several of the last posts, I decided to return temporarily to full time work in a “business” I really enjoyed. It took a while to get started (the initial effort began in April with an unexpected phone call), but on 21 August I began work as a contractor in support of the State Department. US government agencies don’t like us to mention in online forums what we do at work, so I’ll leave out the details for now. If you’re familiar with what I did as a Navy civilian from 2005-2019, you’ll know what business I’m in.
I did not expect to be silent on the blog this long, but putting in 40 hours a week caused me to cut back on the other activities- golf, gym sessions, yard work, going to bed and waking up wanted to, travel (What? No sympathy? Oh that’s right, this was self-inflicted).
When I checked the blog activity last night for the first time in 8 weeks, there was actually a fair number of visits to the site despite the dormancy- no posted comments of course, as I attract a very small, quiet audience. So I’m going to spend a little time this weekend delivering some content and see if I can keep up with the blog a little more regularly. We’re actually coming up on the two year mark for the blog and it won’t be long before hitting that 100-post milestone.
Back to the new job. I will work mostly from home here in TN, but did get to spend the first week in DC checking into the new job at State Department’s HQ. Don’t know how often I’ll be up there, and uncertain as to how much work-related travel there will be. While I ‘m pretty familiar with the business at hand, I’m having to learn new aspects from a much higher/broader level. But what’s really been the challenge is re-learning technology support for the business….
- This office depends heavily on data bases, spreadsheets, and “quick turnaround” document management. Microsoft introduced Excel about 35 years ago as a pretty basic spreadsheet application. It has evolved into a much more capable, and complex, product which takes considerable experience to master unless you’ve been around during this non-stop evolution. I had just basic experience with the application coming into this new job, and will not survive long unless I get pretty comfortable with current Excel capabilities.
- Similarly, document management (document creation, collaboration within a virtual working group, classification management, shared drive file management, etc.) in a “Cloud” environment has evolved considerably over the last 5 years in support of virtual work environments. It makes for much more efficient headquarters staff work, but takes a while to get used to it. One handling mistake, or a computer crash, can wipe out a couple of days worth of work.
Much of today’s workforce grew up learning these new computer-based capabilities either in school or as applications evolved. But it doesn’t take much time out of the workforce to fall behind. That’s where I am. And I was never a quick learner (haven’t gotten any quicker in retirement).
Lastly, there is that good ole’ USG bureaucracy- the hiring process, the check-in process, required training, security clearances, applications for database access, and the all-important government access badge. The first trip back to the DC work environment included riding the Metro and finding my way around the multiple State HQ buildings in Foggy Bottom in 90-95 degree weather. The fun part was getting to visit our old Pentagon City/Crystal City neighborhood (being rebranded as “National Landing”) with the new Amazon HQ campus- just a complete makeover from ten years ago.
If you made it this far through the post, congratulations. It’s now time to get back to retirement subjects, even if they are “on hold” for me for a while.