Work in progress, come back anytime to read it again 😉
For me there are a million reasons why it is called the Phoenix Project. The origin lies in the past of my mother and me. It’s tattooed on my body and followed me into my professional life. I hope it also will be part of my future. But maybe I should start chronologically:
Personal Phoenix
When I was about 15 years old, my mother told me a story about a hospital stay she had endured. It was two years after my birth. It was a very traumatic experience for her, where she thought she died. In her head her spirit floated over her body and searched for a new one (how about a butterfly?). Nowadays we sometimes laugh who the butterfly or fly next to us is.
Maybe her thoughts had something to do with a terrible accident she had as a four-year-old. A handlebar pushed into her stomach and she nearly died from internal bleeding. She was a long time in the hospital and being there again years later maybe triggered something from back then. When she first told me the story I had the picture of a phoenix in mind. It stayed with me ever since.
About the same time I had some friends with tattoos. I asked myself what I would like to permanently carry with me. The phoenix and “Between Scylla and Charybdis” came to mind. My father died half a year after my 18th birthday. I think that’s when I decided to get a tattoo about Scylla, Charybdis, Styx and a phoenix. It has very deep meaning for me. The artists designed a picture for my whole back. My first, only and last tattoo. I now think of it as an indiscretion of youth, but also still don’t regret it.
It doesn’t have anything to do with the phoenix, but here’s a photo of my red travel typewriter. It belonged to my late grandmother who I never met. I like to go fully into the analog world sometimes by writing letters with it. But also my mother taught teenagers how to type with all ten fingers on typewriters when I was a kid.
Educational Phoenix
The typewriter is a symbol of ambivalence cause educational and professional I’m fully integrated into the digital world. I studied electrical engineering and management at the university of applied sciences Leipzig.
During that time, I was in the student council. One of the others made some flyers for us. He gave me the title “blue eminence” (e.g. gray eminence) cause I had blue hair and maybe some people listened to me, I don’t know.
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In my third year I got elected to be one of the spokesperson for the council. I was happy to be second in command. Working with the other one will be great cause we were friends or so I thought.
Everything started when my old Ducati Monster 750 had more and more technical issues. There were a lot of times when she just gave up during a ride. But thanks to my family I got the money to buy a newer version of the Monster, see down below. The right one is my new, the middle my old and the left belonged to my boyfriend.
The other spokesperson wanted to buy my old one. He knew a lot about motorcycles and said he would fix it, so I let him take it. After that he drove without register himself as the new owner. We made a contract were it said he should, but he didn’t for a long time. And when the payment was due, he didn’t pay.
Almost everyone in the council was somehow friends and other people got involved in this quarrel. I couldn’t work with the man anymore and left the student council. I hadn’t done anything wrong but still had the feeling of loosing everything, my friends and purpose. A major depression came. I took a holiday semester to seek inpatient therapy, first day in the ward my mood flipped into hypomania. (I didn’t know it was that at the time)
The three months therapy was a success, even had an interview for a tutor position during that time. So after I taught some first semesters and then took my studies up again.
Professional Phoenix 1
The next year, April 2019, I started working at a software company. I worked in the support of a very customized Microsoft Navision of a big facility management company. I also learned about business process modeling and worked with a tool to make user documentation.
My thesis had the title: “Process orientated user documentation for business software – A guide on how to create interactive training material for an ERP-System”. I wrote it in like the five days before the deadline in total mania. But the thesis got a 1,2 anyway (that’s like an A-). After a successful thesis defense I got myself three weeks of holiday before starting as a full time employee. It felt like I had given everything for the thesis, burned out and rose from the ashes.
Professional Phoenix 2
Have a year into the job one of our General Managers advocated the book “The Phoenix Project” by Gene Kim. It’s a novel about the challenges an IT department of an automotive company is facing. But the important part is how they implement processes to stay afloat. It was the best book I have read in a long time. It changed my whole experience at work, but again so I thought.
I was so hyped about all of that, that I wanted to talk to everyone about it. Now I know some of the feelings were part of the prodromal phase for a psychotic state. First was the hype and then I had feelings like I burned out. Home office was mandatory at that time and after talking to my general practitioner, I stayed home for four weeks. In this mental health month I got coaching sessions to identify were my problems are coming from. I met the coach three times. In the first session we figured out that my problems lie at home.
I moved make to Baden-Württemberg, had coaching sessions, psychotherapy and rehabilitation. It took me to a whole new level of self-development, routine, inner peace and led me to see a vision for my life. My vision is to inspire people!
So I too, like the phoenix, had to go to where I came from to rise back up again. But now I know how to avoid the peak, how to handle myself and of course I use every help I can get.
Footnote
With the category Phoenix Project I will mark blog posts about my work life and interests. The subcategories are Business Modeling, DevOps, User Documentation and my personal interests Social Studies, Politics and Sustainability. Feel free to connect and give feedback via comment on the posts about the topics or as an e-mail under Contact.
Stay tuned, Stay curious, Stay healthy.
