You heard me.

Don’t vote.

Voting is overrated.

Cause who likes either candidate anyway, right?

So don’t even bother.

See?  There’s no reason to vote.

Because you don’t care what happens to you.

Oh, you DO care what happens to you?

Great.  Click here.  You’ll feel much better.

Sorry everyone, I know I keep changing the template, but I can’t seem to get settled, so you’ll just have to cope with it for now.

“This post was brought to you by WordPress for iPhone, and by support form Viewers Like You!  And now, back to our regularly scheduled posting..”

I have to admit, I am thoroughly enjoying the new iPhone 2.0 firmware update.  Everyday I find new apps that make my life easier, wow the people around me, and help me accomplish things I want to get done on the go.  This post, for example, was created using the WordPress app I installed as I sat in a training meeting in a small town outside St. Louis, miles away from the nearest Wi-Fi hotspot.  I <3 my iPhone.

The only question that remains..  To upgrade or not to upgrade..

Speaking of accomplishing the things I want to do, I’ve spent a lot of time recently thinking about what I would most like to do with my personal skillset in the future and which aspect of things I’m interested in are the area I want to focus my efforts with regars to a career or business.  The trouble is.. I’ve found that I have a passion for and feel I could be successul at a number of different avenues out there.  (Yes, I know, this sounds like another typical “Jenna just wants to have her cake and eat it, too” sob story, but bear with me here and I’ll explain what I mean.

I have always had a goal to keep my skillset broad so that most jobs I would feasibly want to get into would be within reach, relatively speaking.  I’ve managed to accomplish this somewhat over the last couple of years, and it has been a great experience, but it has left me feeling more undecided about what I like most and what I really do best.  To illustrate my point, here are a few of my top choices of things I’d like to make money doing and why:

• Photography: I have always loved taking pictures of all kinds of things.  Life is still beautiful to me through the viewfinder of a digital SLR, especially with the freedom that Photoshop and other photo enhancing software packages give to photographers in our generation.  To me, being able to capture that perfect candid moment and save it digitally in a format that can be used an infinite number of times in so many different forms is to find a little piece of perfection in life.  I’ve been told a number of times by friends and family that I have “an eye” for capturing the feeling of something or someone.  This photo bug is also something that runs in my family.  I love photography and digital image manipulation, all the amazing things you can do with it and how it’s always changing and options are expanding.

• Web Design and Site Management: I started tinkering with web deisgn and HTML three years ago and I found that I could quickly sort of what was what in HTML code by reverse engineering a website’s source code even without previously having any understanding of HTML tags.  And besides being able to pick it up fairly quickly and easily, I love doing it.  I love changing a small piece of code, refreshing the page and seeing the work I’ve done instantly.  Instant gratification (instant..  depending on your web host..).  I absolutely love the idea of becoming well versed in higher quality web design and back-end management.  HTML, CSS, PhP, Flash, FTP, MySQL, different content systems…  All that is music to my ears, and especially now that I’m learning search engine marketing on top of it all.  I enjoy tinkering with all these pieces of web site management and could see myself enjoying it as a source of income…  The trouble is, I’m still fairly inexperienced at all the different pieces.  I know enough to be excited about it and to feel that I could do it well between me love of all things geek and how things tick, and the creative, artsy side of ,e that has high standards when it comes to aesthetics and design.  There really is a good market out there for high quality web design.  Many sites out there on the internet can leave you frustrated as you’re trying to read content or navigate around the site.  I have a lot of interest in getting to the point of being able to do high quality freelance web design.  (Not to mention, that work can be done from anywhere, and if you make enough money to need take write-offs, that trip to Tahiti can be written off if I’m coding from my bungalow in the South Pacific..) 

• People: I love working with people.  I love the corporate atmosphere and business environment.  I have a high level of interest in people and helping others get their jobs done more efficiently.  I love working with a variety of people in a variety fo different situations and learning how different people communicate and get things done.  I love going to meetings and finding different ways I can give my input and project ideas.  I’ve always been interested in finding ways to improve communication between different parts of a company and being able to get my hands into lots of different ‘cookie jars’, so-to-speak and multi-tasking my job responsibilities.  I love traveling for work, I love meeting people from similar or competing businesses, taking to partners, all of it.  I love being out in the business world and working up to a level where the horizon expenads and you can see more of the big picture.  This is one aspect of what I love with regards to work and careers that is really hard when it comes to choosing what I want most to do because it’s the most stable, it’s expandable, it brings a lot of opportunities that I wouldn’t be able to seek out and provide for myself on my own.  It has also given me a fever when it comes to schooling.  Because of my experience in the corporate world, I plan to (sometime soon) go back to school to finish a degree in business management with emphases in leadership and entrepreneurship, and maybe one day an MBA..  Then, THE WORLD!  Haha, just kidding..  maybe..

• Electronics: I love to play with electrnics.  I love taking them apart, finding what’s wrong, fixing the problem and putting it back together.  I also love taking old electronics that no longer work and using the parts to create something else that’s unique and is often something you can’t simply go out and buy.  I love finding ways of building my electronics into my furniture and household areas in unique ways that help keep my electronics available to me but out of reach of children and pets.  I also love helping others fix their elextronics and helping them understand more about how things work and helping expand and encourage their technical knowledge, particularly helping women feel more confident in their understanding of technical things.  It has been said many times that “The geek shall inherit the earth”, and this particular earth needs more girl geeks!

• Philosophy: I’ve always had a special interest and affinity for anything relating to ancient Greek and Roman cultures, including language and especially the philosophers who lived in those cultures.  I have always enjoyed philosophy classes and I’ve typically been able to understand the different schools of thought presented by ancient philosophers.  There are so many different ways of thinking about things and I love how philosophical books, classes and discussions challenge what I think I know and understand about life, ethics, and the universe, and teaches me how to constantly look at things from as many perspectives as I can.  IT’s been a huge part of what has helped me improve the way I deal with things, my approach to life and learning, and the ways I manage hard choices and find resolutions to difficult situations.  I’ve always wanted to be able to spend enough time to be well versed in many different philosophers and what they believed, and to spend more time reading books and learning about early philosophers.  I ahve always had a hard time choosing a major because no matter what I end up graduating in, when I’m at school I need philosophy classes to keep me sane, and it just so happens that the classes I want to take would give me a major in philosophy as well.

• Music and Dance: I LOVE music.  Any of you who know anything about my family (or are a part of it) know that music plays and has always played a huge role in my life on a daily basis.  The role music has played has changed faces many tmes throughout my life, but it has remained a huge piece of my life at all times.  When I was young I took a number of dance classes after finding that music moved me so easily.  Anything with the right beat has always given me a compulsive urge to move.  In junior high, I took a short hiaitus from dance and joined the school’s wind ensemble playing the flute, and at home I worked on teaching myself to play the piano.  Playing the flute in band came pretty naturally as both my parents have been or are currently pretty serious woodwind musicians, and being part of the school’s band was some of the best times of my life.  Learning to play the piano on my own, however, was one of the best things I ever did with my musical ability because it has been one of my true loves in life.  Being able to sit down with one particular piano piece and play it with any emotion I’m feeling at the time has been invaluable to me many times in my life, and has been a piece of myself I’ve been able to share with many different audiences in many different places.  In high school I added dancing back into my musical repertoir in the form of ballroom dance.  I started ballroom dance my sophomore year and immediately fell in love with its cariety of routines and types of partner dance and all the social situations in which that dancing ability can be applied.  Ballrom dance has been something that I have tried to keep in my life ever since.  Also in my sophomore year I started into marching band.  I know, I know..  nerd, right?  But despite what you may think, marching band offers some of the funnest times you can have at that age, and believe it or not, in some areas of the country, being in the marching band is the popular thing to do (and if you need proof, I can give it to you).  So through high school music was part of everything: band, orchestra, personal piano study and performance, marching band, ballroom dance, jazz dance and step squad (like Stomp The Yard, and yes I was the only white girl), not to mention listening to music and how that has become a driving force in my life.  After high school, my life changed in a way that pushed a lot of the musical and creative aspects out of my life, leaving what was nothing short of the loneliest and most colorless time in my life.  After this part of my life ended, I needed a creative outlet.  I had been away from piano and dance for so long I was nervous to jump back in.  Enter..  The Silent 5..  I met Kr5is shortly after this music-less time in my life and he quickly became onf ot he best friends I’ve hadn in my life.  One day I heard him playing a song he had written on the guitar that completeld revived my interest in and love for music, but as it resurfaced, it morphed into something different than the typical organizational music and dance.  I had never had a huge interest in learning to play the guitar, and the few times I had tried in the past left me feeling frustrated and intimidated as I tried learning the way everyone else wrote music.  Then I met Kr5is, and his take on writing music purely for the way it makes you feel or to express an emotion you’re feeling, and the way lyrics were not the most important piece of the music lit a fire in my mind.  I started picking up his guitar (which has since been handed down to me and is one of my most prized possessions) when he wasn’t playing it and tinkering with a couple of strings at a time rather than trying to play bar chords like everyone else, because a few strings at a time felt right to me.  I immediately found that the freedom I had available to me with those six strings and the need I had for a creative outlet were a perfect combination for learning how to compose original songs in my own different tunings that perfectly expressed the emotions that inspired them.  I fell in love with sitting for hours with nothing but my guitar and whatever I was feeling in the moment, whether good or bad, and just letting my fingers roam around the fretboard playing whatever sounded good.  Nine times out of ten, what ended up becoming a song typically started out as an accident as my fingers hopped around on the strings.  On some occasions I would accidentally pull or bend a string in a way that made me hear a riff instantaneously, and I would spend hours simply trying to duplicate what had been an accident the first time and expanding it into what eventually has become a full song.  In most cases, these accidents-turned-composition piece express precisely the feeling that inspired them in the first place.  Four years and many sets of strings later, playing my guitar has become one of my favorite ways to waste time.  This love of composing that developed for me has lead me to learn more about recording, mixing parts together, and even playing in a band with some people very dear to me.  A big part of me has always wanted to develop the musical aspects of my skillset and to make a career in composing and performing.

• Dating: Last, but CERTAINLY not least, I’m in the best and most awesome relationship with a guy I seem to want to spend all my time with lately, and while it’s not in the category of what I want to spend my time making money at, it is a factor in what I want to spend my time doing.  How do you stay motivated to fill up your life with all these other things when you find yourself completely content somestimes to just lay on the flor doing nothing but staring at the ceiling and talking to that person?  Everything else can fade into the background so easily sometimes when that person is around.  It’s a classic dilemma because any of these things are great choices and only a matter of making the time, until you introduce someone who fits you well into the mix.  Suddenly all of these things mean time away from that person.  And knowing me and the way I am about wanting to have it all, I want to do all the things I have a love for AND have all the time in the world with my significant other…

Hopefully you can see now the dilemma I find myself in the middle of when I try to decide what I want to do most.  Of course, who has time to build a business in both photography and web design, while attending school full-time to double-major in business and philosophy, working a full-time corporate job that includes travel, then finding time to play with amatier electronic engineering and playing in a band..  Oh yeah, and not to mention the best and most awesome relationship you can have and spending time on that..

I’m open to suggestions.. 

So I’ve installed the new WordPress app on my iPhone, and I have to say I’m really pumped about it! Maybe there is hope for my blog after all..

So it’s time to put it to the test and see how it goes!

It’s official, ladies and gents. I am leaving Henry Schein today. I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting back on the things I’ve learned here. In the three years I’ve worked at Henry Schein Practice Solutions, (previously Practice Management Technology Solutions, previously DENTRIX Dental Systems, Inc…), I have doubled my income, and have moved from lowly tech support to managing a trainer certification program overseeing roughly 360 trainers nationwide. I have also attended roughly 8 tradeshows and accumulated close to 18,000 skymiles from business travel alone. I have worked with dozens of individuals, worked closely at times with a number of members of executive management (including the HSPS Golf Tournament in July 2007 where I was the Little Putter That Could), been in multiple marketing brochures for the EasyDental 2008 software release this year, and had my hands in so many projects I can hardly contain my notes in the drawers at my desk. My professional growth has been tremendous and the opportunities to learn new things have been overwhelming at times, but a welcome stress on almost every level. I have worked with many people here who have become more than just coworkers and who I hope to keep as close personal friends apart from Henry Schein. It’s hard to leave when you’ve spent three years in the same place and still done so much growing. Three years may not be a lot for some of you, but at my age, three years in the same place when life is changing so much all the time is a long time to sit still, especially for someone as restless as I am.

While I’m sad to leave Henry Schein and will miss many people here, I’m looking forward to….

I’m moving to a company called OrangeSoda. They are a local internet marketing firm who is quickly growing to be an incredible company. I spent upwards of a month in the process of deciding if OrangeSoda was where I wanted to spend the next chunk of my working life. I spent some time in the office talking to people, researching the company and their executive management, where they came from, how they got started, etc. I also have a couple of friends who work there, including Jon Sanderson, Dan Garfield, and more recently dubbed ‘friend’, Nate Bagley. I’m looking forward to working with these people, but more than just that. From what I have seen of OrangeSoda, the way they do business, and the team and company morale and environment, I’m very impressed with them. I know they’re a small company still and thus have a little more flexibility to be a little more lax than, say, Henry Schein, but being a large corporation doesn’t mean it’s okay to forget who your employees are. I’m looking forward to working for a company who keeps in touch with the employees who keep them up and running from day to day. The environment, from what I’ve seen, is very much like Hi-Tech Support used to be here at DENTRIX with the throwing of small objects, friendly competitions and trash-talking, group activities on occasion outside of work, and lots and lots of bloggers.

Already I think my role has expanded there, and I don’t even begin work in the office until tomorrow. I really feel that I’m going to find myself in a lot of good learning experiences and having my hands in a lot of different pots that will help me with my own personal business goals down the road, and I’m really excited about it.

While changes are hard, sometimes it’s the best thing we can do for ourselves.

Some of you may have noticed that my blog has been non-existent for a long bit now. I’ve decided to run my own hosting on my own account rather than piggy-backing off other peoples’.  I’ll be the first to admit that I have a lot to learn, but I think I’m starting to get the hang of it.  Getting the old database from my blog to work has proved a little more difficult and ‘over my head’ to start with, but I’ll figure it out.

I’ve also decided to dive a little more heavily into template editing as well, so you’ll see some changes over the next while.

If you see glitches or problems with the site, or if the RSS feed isn’t working right (Steve…) then leave a comment to let me know.

Hasta!