Not much to talk about this week so I thought I would just dwell a little on this personal breakthrough I had this week.

Bit of a major breakthrough today – it was the day I genuinely felt like this was *my* job – not some weird temp gig. Took 4 months but yay!

— Matt Jukes (@jukesie) September 30, 2013

I have a weird relationship with my career. For someone who really hasn’t changed much as a person in twenty odd years and has never really had that wanderlust to see the world that some of my braver friends have (sure I talk a good game but really my game is pretty weak) I never *really* settle in my jobs. I enjoy my work, have no interest in a career change and have made a lot of great friends but apart from a couple of years at JISC I have never really felt comfortable in any job.

I often talk about my two year limit with jobs and was really interested to read this great article  where it talks about the need for 90 days to actually learn a new job and then three years before you get bored with it. I think that probably feels about right and the slight bolt out of the blue Monday seems to reinforce the 3 months thing – I was a bit late but I’ve always been a little slow!

I’m starting to genuinely feel settled. This is so rare as to make me slightly uncomfortable! I am also finally starting to see where I can actually contribute in the medium and longer term to the organisation and have started to think about things in terms of a five year plan rather than two years. That is pretty much unheard of in Jukesieville.

The organisation is still full of frustrations – though it is the smaller ones that irritate me mainly strangely enough – and the challenges ahead certainly haven’t lessened but I guess I have been in place long enough to feel like I have some ‘skin in the game‘  now and that has made things more interesting than ever.

Anyway not a particularly interesting update I realise I’ll try to do better next week!