I have been a web developer for the County of Bruce for ten months now. I’ve spent most of that time working on a single project, and while it is launched now. I still don’t really want to attach my name to it. The project was a major revamp of the tourism website, and in the end, while I was able to code a variety of different things, and give my opinions, I feel like too many things went wrong, and too many common sense ideas were ignored, and in the end, we created a Frankenstein monster.

Beyond that, the project was completed using MODx, a “CMS framework” that took me a fair bit of time to get a handle on, and to this day, still plagues me due to the missing documentation, and limited community.

Add to that the issues we’ve been having finding a suitable, cost effective, powerful server environment for our ever growing stable of sites, and my ten months working for the government feel more like two or three years.

I was spoiled as a freelancer. When times were good, I got to pick and choose my clients, taking only the jobs that would allow me to learn new skills, and keep me excited. I got to work with people that I idolized, and feel like I was an important part of the team.

I’ve also been dealing with two different things that continually pull me away from this job: I want to be closer to my family and friends and I have that one year itch to do something new. I’ve been slowly looking for a new job that will fit my talents, challenge me, give me opportunities to learn new things, and allow me to move closer to my family and friends, but it is a slow process, and while I do feel the itch to move and do something different, I also feel the comfort in knowing that I can handle everything in my job right now.

It is definitely hard to shake the comfort to take a risk, especially since I’ve always taken so many risks with my career in the past.