I see your logic behind what I said, but keep in mind that it's sometimes impossible to judge what the expectations are from online postings, classified job ads, etc, and last but not least, beggars cannot be choosers in today's economy. Had I known that this field I wanted to originally be in was of this nature (sitting in front of a computer for 8, 10, 20 hours a day), I probably would've went into something entirely different because doing that sort of thing just appears very dismal to me. Hey, I look up to you and anyone else for being able to balance that sort of thing and if one day I could find a job that set boundaries like ONLY working 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week in front of a computer with minor exceptions being that of strictly "up hours" or high impact migrations, etc., then I would be a bit more open-minded toward that line of work, but history has a way of admitting an ugly side of this field which I never thought was there originally. And I know that all work / jobs have a negative side to them--it's just when that negative side outweighs the positive, it becomes trash-worthy to me.
And if you're worried about having a sedentary lifestyle why are you applying for jobs where you'll be sitting at a computer for at least 8 hours a day anyway?
Hmmm... Maybe I need to clarify my original stance a bit? To me, a sedentary lifestyle consists of anything beyond that of 8 hours where upon 8 hours a day (to me) is explicitly consistent with normal working hours. Like I said, though, I would be open to the occasional moments of big need, so maybe my thinking is a bit too vague for my own person to have a good grasp on, right? Regardless, though, I'm envisioning a decent job being that of where you don't feel as if your bound by existentialistic thoughts of digital bondage. The job posting I sent a resume to consisted of a job trek that was as close to something I would like to be placed in as anything else I've seen. Ideally, I see myself as more of a web design and development "mix" whereas I'm much stronger on the artsy side than the programming side. I'm great with markup, CSS and all that jazz. I'm decent with PHP, or, should I say that I know enough about it to normally get whatever changes I need in something like a Wordpress install or whatever. However, when I'm asked to do things like my original posting in this thread, that's when I raise the white flag because I feel intimidated and very overwhelmed by the requirements because I don't even know anything much about OOP and some of those higher level things. It just seems too difficult and time-consuming because in order for me to do something like redo some Flash website without the source code or create some Drupal plugin, I would
have to sit in front of my computer for a minimum of 10 to whatever amount of hours just to get to a point to where I feel as if I'm getting somewhere in terms of general understanding--maybe it's a fear of code? Ha. Maybe this is something along the lines of the sort of work you like doing, and that's cool. I have no problem with you or anyone else liking this sort of thing, but to me, it just seems that if this is the general process behind web design, it seems rather overblown and generally way too tedious for my tastes--but that's my value system regarding the professional setting of this stuff.
I won't lie when I say that it's been a big disappointment coming to this sort of conclusion. Believe it or not, I, too, love making websites. But to realize that in order to get anywhere worth mentioning, you're required to do all this (including knowing 2-3 different sorts of languages which all take their own time to learn) is just too much. Life (to me) is way too short for this. I just don't have that capacity, I'm afraid.
Take, for example, this latest gig I had the chance to do. The lady needed a PHP application that could scrape other specified log cabin rental websites for their postings and place them onto her website. She was (in turn) charging a monthly fee to the owners of those websites for her service and while I'm not at liberty to honestly say what the specifics of the scope was, I can say that she expected to have this all done for around $250.00. You see, I envisioned a website of this nature to have a login admin interface complete with the ability to manually specify which websites you wish the scrape and scan. Of course, this would then entail the use of a MySQL database complete with respective fields for better taxonomy of each cabin posting acquired. Also, I see all of this requiring the ability to be able to manually add or remove specific cabin posts that she, herself, may wish to include on her pages regardless of autonomous scans. ...And all of this for possibly $250.00? I know I own some of this problem because I'm sure I should've been clearer on expectations, scope requirements, etc. But her response about how much she saw herself being able to spend on the entirety of the project came before any sort of scope was designed or written to begin with. Maybe she only wanted whatever was scanned to be directly presented to end-users on the homepage, in essence consisting of static displays, but if so, what a waste of $250.00, right? In my reality, it wouldn't have felt appropriate either way.
SO, to all that's end, I think I'm going to get into a different field where I can use what I DO know how to do with websites and apply it to whatever other opportunities I find befitting to a person like me. Maybe one day I can get into crime fighting and where a cape!
