milestones

Today was the Service Awards reception for employees celebrating a milestone anniversary working at the University of Akron.  And while my official date isn’t for a few months, I was recognized for working at UA for 25 years.

Crazy.

A quarter century working at the University of Akron.  From a student assistant in Telecommunications (switchboard operator and office assistant) to the IT helpdesk to 2nd tier support and lab support.  Then the webteam, as a developer, then Assistant Director (and manager of the switchboard, ironically) and now Director of Web Services.  Or, unofficially but far cooler, The Webmaster (™)

I’ve weathered several re-orgs, including the one that moved the Webteam from IT to Communications and Marketing.  As well as two major staffing cuts, a pandemic, and remote/hybrid work.

There is one person in my division that has been there at least as long as I have, but he’s retiring at the end of May.  Making me the “elder statesman”, as I’ve been called.

While we were waiting for the program to start, I caught up with some folks that I hadn’t seen in person in a while – talking about how we got started at UA and missing folks that were gone.

When it came to be my turn to go up on stage and have my photo taken with the president, a few people in the crowd cheered for me – enough that the president remarked on my fan club.   I got a “fist-bump” from my VP as I made my way back to my seat.  And afterwards, several people sought me out and came up to me to thank me for all the help I’ve given them over the years – including some I’d never met in person but knew me only from email. 

Getting recognized for the years was nice, but getting recognized by my peers was pretty amazing.  Made me feel like I was really making a difference.

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I also had a more personal milestone to celebrate this week – 1500 haiku/tweets.  

When I started my twitter account back in 2009, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it since there was a strict character limit and I’m…well…verbose.

But, I liked the format of a Haiku and thought the syllable limit of those meshed well with the character limit of a tweet.  So, I decided that all of my tweets would be in the form of a haiku.

I did a few, then I stopped, then I decided that I would write one every day.  And, this week, I hit 1500 Haikus on my twitter account.

It’s been a challenging hobby to come up with something new every day and then compress it to the bare bones of a story.   I share these on my website and on facebook – and a few folks will respond in kind.  

Tiny stories – but a lot of them. Doing my part to make the internet a little less terrible.