I'm sure I had a reason.

Professional well-being is something that should be considered by everyone regularly.  I can't say how often - I could only come up with some arbitrary period which has no relevance to anyone else's own cycles.  But it's something that I'm fairly certain plenty of people don't think about, at least not everything that it may encompass.  Professional well-being isn't about the binary status of being employed or unemployed; there's such a large overlap of needs that I'm not even entirely sure I can consider it all.

Just like physical or financial well-being, we need to exercise, maintain and develop our professional lives.  A couple of priorities that I have been keeping in mind recently:

Sustainability - There are many facets to maintaining a sustainable profession, but highest there is personal satisfaction.  If I cannot see myself enthusiastic and satisfied with what I want to do in a month, a year or ten's time, then I shouldn't be spending my most immediate, urgent time right now not being there.  Work should be hard, but you have to get some satisfaction from what you do - otherwise, why are you there?

Relationships - At some level we are all business people, and at all levels business is about people.  You absolutely cannot maintain good business without maintaining good communication - with employees, employers, contractors, creditors, debtors, investors, bankers, mother-in-laws, archnemeses, whoever.  Whether the relationship is professional, short, friendly, in confidence, they need to be respected, maintained and worked on.  Without people we have no business, and with no business we have no profession.

Integrity - Honesty and respect should be the core tenants of all business.  Without honesty, there is no sustainability; without respect, there are no relationships.  Enough problems have been caused on the larger scale by dishonesty and disrespect - cowboy tactics did not work there, and they won't work on the smaller scale.  It's just... easier to do things right, and serves no long-lasting purpose to do otherwise.

Well, those are my big three things that I've been thinking on lately.

In other siege related news, I've joined the cool kids on WAR.  It's doing a lot of things I wished WoW did, so I'm pretty happy with it at the moment.  Also, picking up the Collector's Edition for cheaper than the standard?  Goodtimes!

-Anthony

fridgepants