As you've read in these posts I ended up with a kind of geek dream job – Project Management in a game technology company, in my beloved area of middleware. As I work to keep things organized at work – which is my job – a curious thing happened in my personal life. I achieved utter relaxed nirvana.

Of course anyone who knows me or knows people like me realize that I'm lying. I actually got more tense and overorganized.

I admit I'm kind of a workaholic in the way Godzilla kind of likes to step on things. I could win a gigantic lottery and as opposed to a tour around the world or a drinking binge, I'd probably start a new company or foundation, and in general find more to do. I probably would take ages to quit my job, if I even did ("I'm rich but do you mind if I go to part time? No, really?")

So once I got my dream job I sort of relaxed – I could stop the job search, I liked what I did, I could network, etc. In fact, now that the stress was gone I could go back to my own projects! Perhaps even make new ones! Why now that I was managing a creative endeavor, think what lessons I could share between life and work . .

(Some of you are nodding as you see yourself in this. Others are nodding because you know someone like this. Either way I'm guessing there's nodding.  If you aren't, get out more)

What happened was now that I was organizing creative things I liked and was interested in, the lessons I applied to my job easily found their ways back into my life. What was the difference anyway? I could apply all those things I'd read about and studied to my job, and pick and choose what would work at say, here, or Seventh Sanctum. I used tactics for creating notes, I even considered trying to figure out how to get our Project Management tools set up for a home version (fortunately I am also cheap which stopped that).

What happened is then for two weeks I suddenly became overorganized in my personal life. Oh sure I learned and applied a lot – good lessons too – but I overdid it. I began taking not just the tools that worked, but the attitudes AT work with me, and that wasn't fun. The tools were great, but the attitudes snuck in with them – rushing around, trying to fix things, etc. A Project Manager is sort of an organizational firewall in many ways – you're always busy and trying to intercept things. This doesn't fly at home when the only people I have to manage are myself and a geriatric Yorkshire Terrier.

So after about two weeks of being so much more organized and more miserable I asked myself just what the hell I was doing – and it struck me that within two weeks a lot of things I enjoyed were less fun. Things I did enjoy were used as breaks from things I used to enjoy before I began importing every bit of business tactic I used at work at home.

Worse, my inspiration had gotten erratic. Though I was doing good with new generators at Seventh Sanctum, a lot else was less inspiring. Then I realized because my job at work is to help others do their job, here I was trying to help . . . no one do their job. I had less time to be inspired. I should have helped myself, but instead I was doing support tasks without remembering it was me I was supporting.

This would not have happened in a job outside my Geekosphere. The fact that I found my life and job so similar also let me miss where they weren't, and where the jobs I did at work and home differed. I experienced Stealth Workaholism (as opposed to my usual BLATANT workaholism which I can at least notice).

So keep this in mind. If you land that dream job, be careful what lessons you take from it. I learned a lot about good tools and techniques, I tried some great stuff I WILL use in my life. But I imported too many lessons the wrong way, and my attitudes came with them.

Now i'm relaxing a bit, letting the organization help me in my goals – but keeping my goals and inspirations at the center of what I do.  After all, that's why I want to be organized.

- Steve