Done with the Frame, Not with the Work

I am not a quitter. I want to make that clear before I say anything else.

I have spent nearly thirty years in higher education technology support. I have had opportunities to leave. Moments where the frustration was loud enough and the alternatives were tempting enough that walking away would have been understandable. I stayed. Not because I didn’t have options, but because I believed in the work, and I wasn’t finished with it.

I’m still not finished with the work. But I am finished with the frame.

The frame is the part that reduces you. It takes a person with thirty years of experience, curiosity, creativity, and genuine care for the people they serve, and flattens them into a resource. An answer-man. A drone directed to stay in your lane, don’t “make waves”, accept the scope creep of adding tasks to your plate when a coworker leaves, be grateful for your cost-of-living increase, and don’t ask for what you’re worth because the budget doesn’t allow it. The frame doesn’t see a human being with feelings. It sees a function.

I know the exact moment I saw the frame clearly. Not the management, not the policies, not any single decision. The whole system. The container that held the work and slowly squeezed the life out of it. It was during COVID.

When the world went remote, something unexpected happened. The management layer that had spent years directing, redirecting, and cautioning my approach to support suddenly had no mechanism to do so. I was alone at home with my computer, responding to a hundred-plus emails a day from frantic clients, and I tried something new: I sent them personalized, narrated video screencasts walking them through their exact situation, in plain language, with my voice guiding them step by step.

The responses floored me. Not “Thanks.” Not a thumbs-up reaction in the email software. Instead I received “Brilliant!” and “This video is amazing!” and “You are outstanding!” and “You are a rock star!” Superlatives I had never received in my earlier years of support. Something personalized, innovative, and made specifically for them. That was what earned the response I had been chasing my entire career. And management had no move to stop me. Thirteen thousand emails processed. Hundreds of one-to-one video consultations. In one calendar year. The university recognized my effort with an award. But that recognition came from the top, not from my direct management. The department’s response? A congratulations posted in a Teams channel after the award was already announced. Reactive praise, not initiated praise. The institution saw the work. The people closest to me on the org chart had to be told it was worth celebrating.

That was the clarity. Not a single moment. A season. A season where the frame dissolved and the work stood on its own. I saw what my practice looked like without the institutional weight pressing down on it. And I couldn’t unsee it.

That season gave me something else too. Hundreds of client email replies worthy of displaying on the refrigerator door. A President’s Award. And a realization, shaped by my wife and by professional counselors who helped me see what my clients had been saying all along: my worth as a professional was never defined by what management thought of me. It was defined by the people I actually served.

I’m not burned out. I want to be clear about that too. If you asked my clients, they would have no idea anything was wrong. They see the person who answers their questions quickly, kindly, and with a sense of humor. They see answer-man. They don’t see the person behind the answers. They don’t see the cost of doing beautiful work inside a frame that never recognized it.

And that’s okay. Because I’m not leaving the work. The work is who I am. The consultations, the relationships, the way I sit with someone and make technology feel manageable instead of threatening. None of that retires. The relational technologist doesn’t disappear when the institution stops signing the paychecks. He just finds a better frame.

I’m done with the frame. Not with the work. There’s a difference, and it changes everything.

More later…