Feeling good out of my comfort zone

Well, after a long time without writing it's time to resume my occasional blogger activity, and for this fist 2014 post I want to talk about the new direction a have chosen for my life.

I am from Cadiz but since I finished my career, six years ago, I have been living in Seville and working in big companies ( Indra, Sadiel and Fujitsu ) for the most powerful Spanish client: Public Administration. This was my 'automatic professional direction', and although I was comfortable at job and I have learned A LOT during this period, I had the feeling to miss something, that's why I was always looking for something more.

My studies gave me a good knowledge about Java and good experience but thanks to a couple of subjects at University I was also very excited with javaScript and its possibilities. That was the reason to build TimeLapse as my Final Degree Project, but in this time jQuery was 'starting' to be popular and Dojo was my election as it was one of the mature javaScript frameworks available. Even though, I wasn't able to find any professional option for this path and I just keep improving my javaScript skill as an complement in my CV. At work I was always trying to get all front end jobs I find to put into practice things I was learning as front end because I was hired as Java Developer.

But two about two years ago, something changed, I started looking out of corporative IT world to improve, and found that getting new certifications or demanded courses was not the best way to improve in my daily work. I started attending 'non-typically' professional events as a Apache Barcamp, Open Space, Betabeers, SevillaJS... showing me that a different path than working for big companies was also possible. Even I started to write my first side project

The other thing I was always upset worried about was the lack of ownership of my work working somewhere were I wanted to do my best not only because I have to but also because it's the way to work as a team, but in outsources service projects this was impossible, at least in Spain, where the important was to bill hours and not the quality of the final product.

So after 3 year of English preparation in academies ( Spanish English Education it's thoroughly insufficient ) and a clear idea that I wanted to change my professional direction to javaScript and front end, the opportunity appear in front of me, and I, with no doubt, took it. This is currently the job I'm doing from the beginning of 2014, working in Precursive as Javascript developer.

Then I realized that if I was living in Seville was only because my job were there and I always wanted to have the chance to live in Conil de la Frontera, were I like to go to relax and where the quality of life is unbeatable.

The funniest thing about all these changes was the post-shock I got, even when the decision was logic and I was sure that I wanted to don't miss the opportunity it was given to me, I needed some time to adapt myself:

• From living in a big city to live in a little town.
• From working in a big company in person to work in a real start up from home ( teleworking ).
• From speaking with my mates in Spanish to work in English.
• From using Java, Tomcat, Maven to Javascript, Salesforce ,Angular,Yeoman...

So there is no reason to say I haven't gone out of my comfort zone and now I can really say that I have never been happier and more confident with my decisions, even when I have more responsibility over my shoulders and the work is far harder than at my last job... So it was worth.