“Ultimately, I think the lesson of the Olympics is that your life goes further in four years than you think. It’s worth taking time to appreciate the trip.”
That was four years ago. Four years ago, I was just wrapping up my first year at the new job. It went pretty well, as I recall; the worst bit of the year was the ill-fated decision to spend nine days in Alabama at the holidays. But the winter of 2010 seems to have been a bit of a dull moment, with plenty of watching the Vancouver Olympics in HD. Obviously the honeymoon was over at the new job, looking back, and I was missing my gang enough that my birthday present was a surprise trip back to DC. Still, it wasn’t a patch on how things are four years on.
I didn’t say much about the project as it was happening, partly because I generally avoided talking about work business on here and partly because there just wasn’t time. But it was just exactly this time last year that everything really went sideways and pear-shaped, and my conflicting urges – to be a stupendous badass and to be left alone – really got me deep in the shit. I avoided punching this particular tar baby for as long as I could, but I wound up stuck worse than Br’er Rabbit ever did, and there wasn’t any briar patch to beg my way into instead.
It was a combination of every single work trauma I’d ever had to that point: excessive-to-the-point-of-actual-pain physical labor, arbitrary deadlines, an ill-defined project with incompetent leadership, tons of extra bodies of the “now does anyone hear speak Windows, with some difficulty?” variety (including, famously, one contractor who just wandered off after I explained the process and decided he would do something else). Not to mention ridiculous hours, horrifyingly bad nutrition, and severe inattention to personal maintenance (i.e. a hipster neck beard of the sort I’d normally shoot myself in the face rather than wear). Normal duties, which of course I was still on the hook for, fell further and further behind. My shoulder, which two rounds of steroid injections had mostly sorted, was soon hurting worse than ever.
And I had only two sources of comfort: my wife, infinitely patient while inwardly terrified that I was more depressed than she’d ever seen, and my old crew back East, who one day all reminisced about the nightmare of summer 2003 wishing they could ride out and prop me up one more time. That day was one of the best gifts I’ve ever gotten in my life, for the same reason that Roddy McCorley went to his doom smiling with his eyes glad and bright…sure, he may have been hanged, but he went down knowing his crew was coming to save him – and failing that, to avenge him. There are worse ways to go, if you’re going.
Eventually we powered through, but the damage was done. Doctors, chiropractors, therapists mental and physical, painkillers and antidepressants and steroids and acupuncture, for godsakes, and a lot of hard thinking about where I want my life and my career to be headed. No one in the history of the human race ever followed their bliss into IT support, so I either have to figure out how to make a living out of drinking and talking shite on Twitter and Anchor of Gold, or else come to terms with the fact that this is the career I’ve made for myself these last sixteen years.
And maybe that’s part of my irritation with the tech sector at large, because I’ve spent most of my career outside the commercial realm. Non-profit, education, federal government – places where you don’t get unrestricted stock grants and unlimited free snacks and twice-weekly telecommuting and private transit with Wi-Fi. I’m in tech, but it’s not the pretty part – it’s the part where “perks” consist of a shuttle bus from the train station and a coffeepot you can refill yourself for free. I flatter myself that I’ve been in the tech sector for sixteen years, but let’s face it – most of the time I’ve been a bit-janitor, functionally little different from the general services folks you call when the light fixture overhead shorts out or the carpet needs to be replaced or the desk needs reassembly across the office.
In fairness, I was at Apple for three years, where I was a glorified dock-walloper half the time and an organic set of shell scripts for the rest. Most of my work in the latter years could be attributed to the fact that our database was tossed off as an afterthought by the C-team FileMaker developers. I did get an ESPP and an original iPhone for my trouble, but I also got knee surgery and a creeping sense that my technical skills were eroding daily in favor of days spent chasing people on the phone to send our property back to us pleeeeease.
I wasn’t out there coding projects, I wasn’t out there developing apps, I wasn’t any manner of engineer or designer or what have you. I’m the IT Crowd, I’m Nick Burns Your Company’s Computer Guy, I’m a glorified version of the bad stereotypes at Best Buy (which is one reason I’ve always gone out of my way not to dress like a computer person). And I’m getting all the crap of the high tech life with none of the rewards.
Maybe it’s time I decided I’m not a non-profit.