So after 9 years working professionally as a video editor, I'm pivoting my career in a more technical direction. My new position at Sirens Media is firmly in the IT realm, and while it's IT at a media-centric business (television production) I've stepped away from a creative role.

In one sense, this has been a long time coming. I've considered myself—since a young age—a more "left-brained" or "analytical" (whatever you want to call it) person. While I dabbled in web design, graphic design, typography, photo editing, and video editing as a teenager, these pursuits were always grounded first in an interest in the technologies behind the tools first. I'd been playing with computers and learning how software worked since I was 6 or 7, and trying out new stuff on computers was a big part of my growing up experience. Being able to make my career in video editing for almost a decade grew out of an interest in the tools and technologies that made the process possible in the first place.

On the other side of the fence, my departure from Bethesda was unexpected. Being laid off was a serious blow to my self-confidence in my work and abilities, and it took me the better part of a year to really recover. And yet, I could feel that I was burning out. The demands of continually creating new work takes a toll, and the spark to create was going out. I knew a change was necessary.

The best part of moving into IT at Sirens has been twofold. Firstly, I'm gaining lots of new skills (or polishing old ones that had fallen by the wayside). I haven't dealt heavily with anything beyond basic networking since my CCNA days in high school, so getting to deal with managed switches, VLANs, routing, and more has been a great refresher. I've gotten to dive into server administration, so I've been learning about DNS, VPNs, user and group administration and permissions, as well as data management and archiving. I'm getting to research new tools and technologies and make plans for implementing software across an organization. But secondly, I've gotten to utilize my experience with media when it comes to troubleshooting edit systems, or converting proprietary media formats for ingest for the post team. A lifetime of computer experience and 12 years of using Macs means I was able to hit the ground running, but also gave me a solid foundation on which to build a host of new skills.

I don't know what the future holds for me or my career, but I'm excited to be at the start something new and different. It's a good feeling, and one that for a couple of years I'd missed. Here's to another decade of growth.

I’m excited to announce that the podcast idea that I’ve been rolling around in my head for months is now finally an actual, live thing in the world! It’s called “Matt Hasn’t Seen That” and it’s hosted by myself and my good friend Ricky Gonzalez. If you enjoy movies, comedy, or listening to two nerdy guys talk about/make fun of stuff, feel free to check it out.

If you’ve stumbled on this site, you’ve probably notice it looks a little… bare. That’s because I’m busily transitioning my professional presence over to Squarespace 6. To call it an upgrade from my old, hand-coded, non-responsive design, mobile-unfriendly, “uses tables for layout” site is a severe understatement.

Of course, I’m also still busily and happily employed at Bethesda Softworks, so I’ll be bringing this site up to speed at my own pace.

In any event, thanks for stopping by, and don’t worry about the empty rooms. I’ll be furnishing them soon enough.