Why are you the way you are?

I love cars, really, I do. 

The image at the top of this post is of the engine in my daughter's car. She called me the other day in a panic to tell me that her oil light was flashing, and then that her car made a strange noise and died. After driving with my wife to rescue her at work and retrieve the car, I set to work figuring out what the issue might be, hoping for something simple. At the end of many Google and Bing searches (I get points towards gift cards, what?) I found that the most probable cause was the timing chain tensioner. Not a trivial piece to reach for anyone, let alone me in my garage. 

I reached out to several mechanic friends, and they recommended just replacing the engine if it was under warranty, which it wasn't, not even after Hyundai extended the warranty. So, I set my sights on YouTube and found a video that breaks down how to do the repair yourself, bought a new impact wrench and the parts I would need and got to work. Three days later the car was all back together, and I took it for a long drive to see if I had fixed te problem. I am happy to say that the problem hasn't shown up again so far.

Why would you even attempt something so difficult?

I get this question a lot as well, usually prefaced by the statement, "I could never do that!" The answer to this question is part of why I am the way I am, so it is pertinent to the topic of the post. 

I grew up on a farm, well, I worked on a farm when I was younger, I have never really grown up. My grandparents on my mom's side of the family had a farm with apple orchards and a store we affectionately called, "the Stand" or "The Fruit Stand". Locals in Orem called it Verd's since that was its name, named after my grandpa Verd, oddly enough (it is a Utah thing to name your business after yourself for some reason).

One of the first things you learned on the farm, or working for Grandma Lucile in the Stand was that if something needed to be done, you best just get to doing it. Never mind if you know what you are doing, just get in there, get your hands dirty, and get it done. I think this attitude was born in my grandparents during the great depression (the financial one, not the feeling when you have to wait for the next season of Tel Lasso), when finances were tight to the point of being nonexistent. IF you can't afford to pay someone to do it, you just do it. 

This wasn't just a thing for the grandkids either, grandma set the example. I remember watching her carry around 50-pound boxes of potatoes or corn to put them out on display for sale. She outworked all of the grandkids, and then balanced the books and kept the house. She was an amazing example to all of us, and we still remember how she out worked us to this day. It didn't help that she was all of 5 feet tall and less than 100 pounds!

These experiences shaped my attitude about responsibilities and accountability, and I have carried this into my professional life. Regardless of my position, there is nothing I am not willing to do if it needs doing, and I have told my teams that I will never ask them to do something I am not willing to do. It also means that even if I don't know exactly what to do, I will do the research and figure it out. No one else is going to do it for me. 

From the Stand to the Office Building

When I returned from my mission, I started working at the Stand again, got married, and realized that working for a living is really hard. I had an offer to join a company that sold dehydrated food storage products as a sales rep, and I jumped at the opportunity to work from a desk. Had I ever done sales? Well, sort of at Verd's, but nothing like what I experienced at this new job. I traveled to conferences and trade shows to demonstrate our products, worked in a storefront selling to the public, made deliveries, and ever designed signs and eventually labels for the products. 

Later I worked in production design and prepress, building layouts, brochures, and printing film for offset printing. That led me to work in the advertising department of a large department store where I also began doing some multimedia design and eventually even some web design. Those skills brought me into a job as a multimedia developer/IT Director/video editor/web designer/whatever else we need at an events company where I also did a lot of backend web work and network management. I went from there to owning my own company for a few years, building websites and apps for local businesses, and then to a full-stack engineer position, and eventually back to Director of IT. 

Through all of this, I was doing what needed to be done to get projects completed. It didn't matter if I knew how, I found ways to figure it out and got it done. Having an open mind and being open to new adventures and possibilities led me into placed I never would have dreamed of when I was unloading a semi-trailer full of watermelons from Green River, Utah as a teenager at Verd's. I traveled all over the US, Canada, and even made it back to Europe.

So Why Am I the Way I Am?

The answer is all there, but the simplest explanation is that I am open to new possibilities, and I have a GSD (Get S**t Done) attitude. The combination of those two characteristics is all I have needed to get me through so far. Sometimes it seems miserable, like when we were sorting apples in the winter, or when I was laying on a freezing garage floor removing an oil pan, but it has made me into who I am, and I like who I have become.