What's this? Another HR blogger? What's special about this guy? Why should I bother reading whatever rambling mess he's got going?

All good questions, and to be honest, I don't know if I can or if I even should try and convince you to read what's going on here - what I can do is give you some background and hope that if what I'm cooking is something you have a taste for, you might be willing to stick around (fair warning, we like veggie burgers up these parts). Or drop by once in a while, heck, maybe you'll even leave a comment (or two).

Here's the deal... I work in HR. My career has spanned Fortune 500 companies to international not-for-profits to universities; I've worked in or managed everything from employee relations to compensation to employee learning to organizational development to talent management. I have a couple of master's degrees and a certification or two; I've managed teams and people and projects. I sound sort of qualified to talk HR, right? A bit like an egotistical ass, yikes, I hope not!

Here's the thing though, there was a point in my career where if you'd asked me how I felt about my job my answer would have echoed what I've heard so many times from friends struggling with their place in their company or industry, "I hate it."

Human resources wasn't what I set out to be when I grew up, I wanted to be a lawyer or a journalist or a politician or a golf pro (the teaching kind, not the PGA Tour kind) or a chef or a photographer or something really cool and flashy and super awesome. Then one day instead of moving to The Windy City for what at the time seemed like the opportunity of a lifetime to run events at a country club, I made what felt like a horrible decision but in hindsight was maybe the most intelligent thing I've ever done (a decision I have to thank my then girlfriend, now wife for): I stayed put. It wasn't long after that I decided to leave the golf industry behind and finish my undergraduate degree in psychology with an emphasis in Industrial/Organizational Psychology (and a minor in Management and Organizational Behavior to boot) and landed an internship in HR with a leader in the corporate identity and facility services industry.

What was supposed to be a summer internship extended into fall and before I knew it I was eyeballing graduation. From there I landed my first true HR job with one of the country's leading cable television providers where I spent two years - a place where one of the eight different supervisors I had during my tenure stated "a year here is like seven years anywhere else, we measure our careers in dog years" - and learned more than I could have ever imagined in such a short period of time.

I sat at the bargaining table, was involved in mergers and acquisitions, developed programs and processes, implemented the first of what turned out to be many online talent management systems over the course of my career, learned how to swab someone's mouth as part of a drug screening, had an angry employee dive across my desk at me, fired a friend, caught an employee lying about a dead grandmother to cover up for being in the poky on a bender, helped to bust an internal ring of computer thieves, investigated an employee who had wired his home and was running a voyeurism website out of his cubicle, moved offices seven times, was connected 24/7 to a Nextel resulting in calls at midnight on Thanksgiving and all too frequent four a.m. wake ups, and helped to manage more mass layoffs than I care to remember - I was young and stupid and it was hell; glorious, wonderful hell.

And that was how I started out, from there I spent time in the pharmaceutical industry learning the fast and dirty of high dollar corporate recruiting, worked in the trenches for one of the most amazing non-profit organizations I've ever come across, and found my way to my current role with a public research university where it seems my jobs grows and changes and evolves into something new every day - a complex hydra of interrelated job responsibilities that has me mixed up in everything that isn't benefits or payroll.

But that's not the whole story - during those same years I completed an MBA and then followed that up with an MFA in writing (thus my long-windedness), I dabbled in teaching and carried over 30 credit hours in the classroom one semester on top of my full-time HR job. Somewhere in there I found the time to launch an online literary journal that's been featured in ESPN the Magazine and other such places. I stayed busy because at times I was unsettled, in the back of my head there was always this inkling that maybe I should be doing something else, and every time that bug would bite I'd find myself examining my life, my job, and realizing I get to do some absolutely amazing things.

So that's part of the impetus behind this whole site, I enjoy what I do, over the years I've learned a lot from some amazing colleagues, managers, and leaders - and I'm still learning, something I both enjoy and see as part of that last line on my job description: Other duties as assigned. Only, I'm the one making the assignment to explore and discover and be better - and that's another part of this whole experiment, to learn more and maybe help some others do a bit of exploring of their own, be it as seasoned practitioners of the people arts or as outsiders curious if all HR professionals are really like the caricatures on television and in comic strips or to the newbies be they students, interns, or early career professionals interested in the thoughts (and ramblings) of someone who's been in there shoes.

HR was a career I had never really planned for until I fell into it, but it's a career that on its worst days is still better than most any other job I can imagine and I'd like to share my thoughts and observations about all the ways it actually is kind of super awesome and challenging and frustrating and smile-inducing; and if I'm lucky you'll stick around and maybe we can learn something new together (or at least get a good laugh).