Carl Setzer

I've been working on a Udemy course to continue to grow my web developer skills. This one is the 50 Projects In 50 Days, and yesterday I tackled the “Double Click Heart” project. This one counts the number of times you click on the featured image, along with a little heart animation. What impressed me the most on this one was seeing how the heart animation was mostly CSS. It’s also nice to feel my understanding of JavaScript settle in deeper. I feel motivated to finish this course. Now I’m past the halfway point and have blocked time to get this finished, I’m starting to wonder what I want to do next. There’s so much more I want to learn that choosing a path is challenging. Do I go deeper still into vanilla web development? Do I explore Angular or React? Or do I go a different direction and look to Python? I’ll write about that as I hash it out! Also, I’m looking for a new role. Ideally, one that utilizes my tech skill set. However, it seems that more people want to talk to me...

Here’s the job description below. We’re a dynamic and fun team looking to make something really great in the local construction market. Residential Home Detailer Wanted for Growing Construction Company  (Snohomish County) Compensation : Depending on Abilities Employment type :  Full Time This person will report to our construction manager We are looking for a highly motivated, energetic, enthusiastic, and hard-working person to help us maintain our jobsites throughout Snohomish County. Responsibilities include but not limited to: Walkthrough prep for new homeowners Complete punch lists Follow-up on warranty items Landscaping Fencing Pick-up work Requirements: Ability to learn quickly Transportation Great “can-do” attitude Able to follow instruction and meet goals and deadlines Well rounded skill level Minor Carpentry skills from millwork to framing Ability to do drywall repairs, patches, texture & paint Some knowledge of landscaping...

I was reading an email newsletter sent by my friend and life coach Wendy Kranz , which talked about confidence. Got me thinking: what would I do with more self-confidence? Now, I've long struggled with low levels of self-confidence, manifesting as over-thinking, over-analyzing and over-planning. And I'm now thinking that it's manifested as a sense of dissatisfaction with my career. I've long been an executive/administrative assistant, and the similar roles that flow out of that. And with that a deep-seated "you can be so much more" mentality. Really, though, I've never been dissatisfied with my work, with the things I do, with my contributions. There's something deeper. Once I thought it might be a displaced sense of gender-roles. Being a guy in a typically female dominated role felt awkward at times. Never externally, no one ever said anything untoward about that to me. No, it's internal. Anyway, that doesn't seem so real any more. Esp...

My career has been rather unique. At least when compared to so many of my friends. It's been terribly linear. I've orbited around administrative/secretarial/office manager stuff. Orbited, and sometimes even held those titles. But it's not been a deliberate effort. Mostly, my employment has centered around taking advantage of opportunities. I generally consider the growth and development opportunities, long-term viability, and all that sort of stuff. Ironically, once I tend to be in a role, I generally settle in. Not sure that's the best way to live, but that's what tends to happen. The universe rarely lets that happen. My main element of deliberation: family. That's what's been important to me. Now, both at Starbucks and at Microsoft, I didn't see how deeply that was. When I left Microsoft and decided I wanted to focus on eliminating my commute. I concentrated on Snohomish County, and was interviewing with Boeing before I was hired with C&K...

I've been calling myself an accidental real estate agent for quite awhile. It's well past time to explain what I mean. Most real estate agents I've met made a deliberate choice to enter this field. For many, it was money. Others I know are in this for the flexible hours, to be their own boss, and so forth. The specifics are less important though. They made a deliberate choice. Very few people in the industry stumble in. Just over five years ago, after a firey end to my last stint at Microsoft (if you want to hear the story, let's meet for coffee sometime), and I was burned out on the Fortune 500. My focus for the ensuing job search was Snohomish county. I stumbled upon a Craigslist ad for an office manager and was hired. A few months in I got my license and things changed a bit further. Now I've coordinated sales for hundreds of transactions, created marketing for even more, and developed great relationships with amazing, dedicated and talented folks. My career...

Lately I've been realizing something about myself: I don't have these grand aspirations towards power in regards to my career. Confrontation is gloriously unpleasant. I love working in an admin role. That's what I've defaulted each time I've been laid off. I can't imagine doing anything else. I have tried a few things, but they generally come to naught as I don't have the massive drive such needs. It's delightful finally say "I'm cool with being an admin". I'm good at this. I add value to the teams I work with. I'm great at the administrative work needed on any project. I have no grand drive for acclamation and power. I'm quite comfortable being in the background. I like for my team to respect me and value my work.

For most of my adult life, I've felt pulled to choose a specialty. And I've tried, dozens, maybe hundreds of times. As each time has resulted in failure, I realized, some time ago, that my varied and rich perspective is a valuable thing. Oddly, I never really considered my multi-faceted focus to be a good thing, just that good things had come from this. I admired the great work done by the specialists and really only saw myself supporting that work. Not that I had a creative and powerful perspective to add. However, after this TEDTalk, I see otherwise. Ms. Warnick talks of multipotentialites, people with a variety of interests and passions. These people work those into skills. Something richer than simply generalists supporting the more valuable specialists. People whose brains work like mine. And, most importantly (to me at least) that this is good. That we have a great deal to offer the world. Considering the multi-faceted issues that our world faces, we have a particularly...

It's so easy to succumb to this desire: be something , something important, impactful, powerful.  Chasing after an ideal "should be", losing sight of who you are; cruel phantoms. So easily we get pulled into career/family/cultural expectations, that when we lose sight of ourselves, we don't easily see the path back. That's assuming there is a path "back". I expect, for many of us, this is a path forward; new direction, new experience. Often, the path of self-discovery and self-acceptance is a journey of deep creativity; true exploration. A journey not started in youth, rather born out of regret and emptiness.

Today's thought: Freedom: The least amount of external influence on my life. Looking over my life so far, it's clear to me that I value freedom highly. I've walked away from jobs that looked like they'd box me in. I love the independence I currently have. Even "lots more" money would be a tough choice, and probably not worth it. There's little I'd trade it for.

I'm quite pleased we were able to pull off hitting page one of "Marysville WA Realtors" again. The market is highly competitive right now, so having high ranking is powerful. Anyway, this was squeal-worthy to me.

I'm expanding on my thoughts from a few weeks back . LinkedIn functions as an afterthought for so many. Sharing of personal stories happens on Facebook. Well, most internet interaction seems to happen on Facebook. It had games, myriad other apps for consuming time. Yet, if you're like me, you have a career to manage. I value my career, even though I'm trying to find a unique path through my work life. So, I'm trying to nurture my LinkedIn account. Maybe I should call it "curate". Immaterial, really, the label. What's important is deliberate focus. I seek to expand my influence. Thus, connecting with new people consistently. At least weekly access, though I shoot for more. Sharing relevant articles. And, though seeking to expand my network, not add everyone in the world. Additionally, I want the heavy lifting done before I'm seeking a new job. That's one of the cynical parts to LinkedIn. People don't use the tool extensively until they...

Having spent a goodly amount of time the past few years unemployed, I've utilized all the major "career" sites a great deal.  One thing I've lamented for years: their focus on job search. Now, that's a particularly important tool and need, but there's so much more to managing one's career. Guidance on ways to maximize your current role, how to navigate advancement/promotion, whether you'd do well as a manager, or should focus on being an individual contributor...all these things, and more, would be helpful. Another good thing that would be accomplished by such content: bringing in and audience greater than the job-seeker/recruiter crowd. Expanding the value of the site could well make for richer and more dynamic engagement. And, perhaps, more people would be encouraged to manage their careers better, outside of crisis mode.

I love some things about this age. I like sitting in bed working. Getting some calm family time, yet also arranging my day, answering email and the like. And making a much delayed blog update without too much effort. Another "like" is being able to utilize wasted time better. Things like standing in line, waiting for the doctor. I don't sit reading months old magazines; I get work done. Crazy side bar: I've spent the later half of this year working for a real estate company. Same sort of work, whole new sector. I never would've guessed just how tech dependent real estate is. Or can be. Perhaps a piece of this tech utilization is related to locale. We are in a major tech hub. My team lives and breathes via Dropbox and Gmail. Acrobat is additionally critical. Most communication with our sellers is via email, or via website. Thinking of websites and real estate, one thing I spend time researching are Home Owners Associations, water associations and such. People...

I'm sure you've heard the question, "what would you do if you won the lottery?" Or any of its many variants ("received a million bucks", or the simple (heard at a Franklin/Covey seminar) "what would you do if you didn't need to worry about income?"). These tools guiding you past fears and to your deeper values. A bit of insight shows me they miss a personal roadblock: insecurity. Sure, I worry about money, or, rather, it's lack. Which impacted my life/career choices. This nagging sense I should be doing something great pains me, pushes me. I have friends who have done mission work in Africa/Central America/Asia, have led teams in Fortune 500 companies, are globally sought out speakers, along with many other amazing things. All of this tweaks my underlying insecurity, this sense that I should be doing "more". And that my "lacking' in this area is due to some laziness, a lack of focus, or some other character malaise. I s...

Currently, my job search is focused on agencies. What's amusing to me is how antithetical to all the resume prevailing wisdom agency resumes need to be. You don't want to be TOO focused. Quite to the contrary, they should be broad. That resume gets sent around for various positions, often without any prompting from you. A sufficiently broad focused resume gives their recruiter the ability to send your resume out to a variety of firms. Just my thoughts...I don't intend to bill myself as a resume expert!

There are times that I hate this whole job-searching thing. All the customizing resumes, tweaking searches, poking around random websites, trying to gauge what recruiters are seeking, finding ways to bring my resume to the top of the swarm...yeah, fun. Of course, one of the most fun parts of all this is explaining what kind of career I've had. What a long, strange trip THAT's been. That path has been, as Gary Erickson (founder of Clif Bars) would put it, has been upon a white lined road. While journeying in Europe, he found a map that differentiated the main, heavily traveled roads with red and the smaller, lesser frequented ones with white. In his book , he uses that analogy to explain the path his business has journeyed, as well as his viewpoint on decisions. My winding career, though, makes it hard at times to describe what I am, at least in terms of my career. Perhaps it's easier to talk about my foci right now. I am seeing my deepest gifts as administrative, if not...

The early part of my career was spent in the non-profit sector. First I was involved with state and local advocacy with AARP (this parlayed into regional advocacy on federal issues towards the end of my time there). Then I was the office manager for a small church . An Episcopal congregation with a solidly progressive bent, I was quite at home. Generally, I considered business to be destructive and “the problem”. With that, I delighted in the notion of trying to save the world. Then, through a series of accidents, I moved to the corporate world, working at Starbucks in Corporate Social Responsibility . During this time, I focused mostly on environmental affairs, but worked in a number of side projects. Thus, even in a Fortune 500 company, I was saving the world. Now, though, I find myself in the belly of the beast, at Microsoft . I am in Operations, and supporting finance within that. MSFT does have a Corporate Citizenship team, and does good philanthropical work. But I am far remo...

Last week, I started working again after 6 months off. It's been a strange trip, let me tell you. First, starting work after a 6 month break was rather surreal. The first few days were quite exhausting. However, I rebounded quickly. My brain is starting to get back into the swing of organizing teams (the heart of my career to this point). Now, I'm not back into the full-time, permanent work-force. I'm a contractor/temp, working for a large technology company in the greater Seattle area. Fortunately, I'm coming from Starbucks, so I have experience working for a large, Fortune 200 company. I now how to function in controlled chaos. Though I've explored a good many career options, directions in which to wander off to, I keep coming back to administrative and office management. Finally, I feel that this really is my calling. I'm good at this, and can jump into pretty much any setting and succeed. This next stage shall be, well, unique in the course of my caree...

One thing I let slip over the past few years is learning. I was studying, mostly with a future focus. However, I grudgingly did so, and it was somewhat painful. I need to actively learn from this point on. For instance, I used Excel quite extensively in my last few roles. However, there were several tools built in that could have made my work easier and more effective if I had taken the time to continue exploring. I generally only explored Excel when I needed to come up with something new. That generally only gave me the most basic of results. Now I will budget time for in-depth study and learning. Proactivity must be my new mantra. Via BlackBerry

I've developed several plans since my layoff back in February. My first, main, plan A, whatever, has been to pursue a BA in Applied Computing at the University of Washington's Bothell campus . Part of this was to have the State pay for this (I've been taking classes part-time in the evenings pursuing this). However, it doesn't look like that's going to work. Mainly, degree completion is NOT on of the Commissioner Approved Training options. Thus, though I still await the official answer, I'm pursuing alternative tracks.   Now, I'm trying to position myself as a communicator with solid "social media" skills. I've seen several positions for such. Sadly, no bites in this sector yet. We'll see, though. This is where I put the lion's share of my resume focus.   Lastly, I have my fall-back of administrative assistant work, which I've done plenty of. My resume is strong for this, and I have several opportunities lurking nearby via ...