Playing with dolls
During December I’m playing with dolls! Stardoll is a community where little girls (and boys) can play with “paper” dolls. As a user you create a me-doll that resembles (or doesn’t resemble) you, then you dress and accessorize your doll. Other than that, Stardoll has the common functionality found in most communites.
Judging by this description, Stardoll may not seem like the most interesting community out there. What puts it very high up on my list of places to work at is their 45 million users. 45 million!
I mostly do front-end there, but it’s extremely interesting to get an insight in all the technical details of such a large community and to see how they work; the server setup, release cycles and getting a feeling of the place and the people there. I really love my job, but I think my me-doll looks a bit grumpy?
Swedes and their “trygghet”
If I listened to everyone trying to tell me what an extremely bad idea it is to start my own business, I wouldn’t get anything done. I think this is something very Swedish, to cling to your comfort zone and stay at that job you really don’t like instead of just finding what makes you happy. And in the meantime doing your very best to convince everyone trying to do something of their lives not to.
Almost everybody know some consultant who has difficulties finding stuff to do. That consultant typically gets miserable over time. Conclusion: Consulting must be a VERY BAD IDEA, that no one should try doing at all.
There is a Swedish word called “trygghet”. There isn’t any perfect translation, but it means something like security, safety or safeness. Trygghet is very important for Swedes, I think that’s why people tend to have such difficulties understanding this. How on earth could I quit my job (I wasn’t even fired!) to do someting so not “tryggt”?
I guess most people try to imagine what it would be like for them to try to find a consulting assignment. But they’re not me.
After having done my morning yoga to get some inner peace, I’m now ready for my first day of my first assignment. I’ll spend december doing front-end-work for a very large community. I’m really looking forward to it!
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