Something decaffeinated, something new

In which our Hero finds himself worn thin and wondering what to be

On the one hand, I want to grumble about middle-age and the loss of the omnipotence of youth. I want to complain that I hit limits sooner, that my will fades a little faster. I keep noticing edges, of strength, of mental clarity. On the other hand, I look at the water I’m sipping and think back. Ten years ago, my morning drink would have been a sugary coffee with cream. Twenty years ago, it would have been a can of Coke with a side of candy bar.

So yes there was something inherently less worn, but maybe it was just my capacity for self-abuse. I can still have a Coke and an Oh Henry bar in the morning, it doesn’t disturb me as a choice. I can still have coffee too. I just don’t. This fatigue has a truthful basis in age, but how much more of it is the lack of chemical support. (Or maybe just different chemical support)

None of that changes the tired. I’m pushing harder than I like, with less efficiency than I like. The side project has been killing me. I hit a brick wall at speed, a technical limitation that surprises me only because of where the line falls, rather than the fact that the line exists. But the work is coming due, and I’m doing it for a pay scale that makes my labour essentially free and I have to keep reminding myself that I’m not doing this for the money, this project is for strategic reasons and I just have to endure the stupid.

It’s a common failing of technologies. The brochure cries out about features, “You can do A! You can do B” and the documentation even gives examples of how to do each of them. Then you start building and discover that while you can do A or you can do B, doing A and B at the same time is a whole different ball game. For me, it meant that the my slow series of incremental hacks to get around each successive problem had led me to the worst possible outcome: A dead-end, from which I’d either have to do massively redundant work, or from which I’d have to backtrack.

I backtracked. Picked the built-in feature I needed the most, and rebuilt the second feature from scratch. It means at least a month of wasted struggles, but the result is leaner, meaner, and most-importantly, minimally redundant, so that going forward hurts less.

But it’s meant some long days and late nights. And the ongoing question, is this really worth my while? I’m not sure.

Got home and largely just collapsed. Fell asleep in my chair, in a bright room, full dressed. (laugh) Who says I don’t listen to my body?

So in one of those whorls of self-referential (I’ve just lost the ability to spell that word. Oh google? Ha, got it right, but I was having serious self-doubt) awareness. I got two questions when I polled you, Gentle Reader, that were both aspirational:

[XistDense] asked me to “Describe your dream job” and [Jinn] asked “What do you feel passionate about?

Meanwhile, one friend is trying to talk me into joining his outfit based in Minnesota, and the friend I’m doing this side gig that I’m tired of is asking me to think about what I want to do next because he’s got more work and if I have the time or interest, we could dig into more stuff.

Minnesota guy asked me the same kind of aspirational question, though he intended it in a career specific way. “What do you want to be? What do you want to do?”

I don’t know. So start with XistDense’s question, what’s my dream job?

I think we can safely say it’s a technical job. I like solving technology problems. I like and need diversity, it’s what makes work interesting and builds my skills. Diversity of working problems, diversity of environments. I need smart people who pursue their interests, they expand my own reach and horizons, expose me to new technologies. I need flexibility, because when important things come up, you need time to deal with them first. I need travel. Not all the time, that’s brutal and grueling, but I think my dream job would include travel for a few days every few months.

In many ways, it means I’ve been working my dream career. I wish I had more technical friends, but at least I have friends who are bright enough that I can talk problems through with them, regardless of domain. The consulting gig was perfect, because it took me to new challenges and new companies regularly, and I know that the challenge made me better (Just like the sameness now makes me lazier)

My current situation is something of a dream. I’m an independent consultant. I am my own boss, I can pick and choose what I work on. Yes, if I say no too many times, the clients will just go find someone more likely to say yes. But I have the time to take off to escort my mother home, or pop out of work to get my folks from the airport, or have a long lunch with someone.

So I guess the question goes back to, what do I want to do? And the answer is always, a little of everything. The bigger companies, the more formal employers, they seem to be doing less of that. As a small shop, I get as much as I care to take on.

But I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.