We didn’t celebrate St Patrick’s Day that much in the old country. Oh sure, I got free-rolled into the 4P’s once on the big day, and I did it just to be able to say I had, but we were Irish enough in our regular weekends that we dismissed March 17 as amateur day, a ridiculous confluence of American marketing and the perpetual need of twenty-somethings to seek an opportunity to drink like mad. St Paddy’s was for people who thought green beer was cool, Killian’s Irish Red was authentic and 26, 6 and 32 were something from Lost.
And then I moved west, and suddenly, it felt important to have a Guinness on the train into work on the 17th and blast the Pogues “Streams of Whiskey” at full volume. Now it’s a day to holler back at the old gang, renew the old shtick. And it got me thinking about something else, too, as we bustle around trying to straighten up the house for company coming.
In the late 1990s, the National Geographic Society did a retention survey, attempting to ascertain why people dropped their memberships (i.e. stopped subscribing to the big magazine). And the number-one reason, the overwhelming leader in the clubhouse, was that they couldn’t find a place to store them. People just don’t throw away National Geographic. There was a story, possibly apocryphal, of a sheriff who saw that a well-loved neighborhood family was moving away and throwing out their National Geographics. He found this odd, sniffed around a little, and discovered that the family were actually Soviet spies. Sounds way too good to be true, but it makes the point.
Sometime this autumn, around Christmas, I will have been at my current job longer than I was at NGS.
It stings for a couple of reasons. I’ve had four major employers in my adult life, none of whom I ever had to explain what they did. But none of them – not NASA, not Apple, and certainly not where I am now – triggered the instant “HOLY SHIT THAT IS SO COOL” that the big yellow rectangle did. And I miss that. I miss it more than I’m willing to admit to myself, for a couple of reasons. For one, Silicon Valley isn’t as cool as it used to be. The influx of tech dickery, the invasion of San Francisco and the growing sense that this is still where your future comes from, only now it’s corporate-technocracy and dystopian – that’s unpleasant enough.
But for another thing, I haven’t grown since I took this job. I’m not sorry I took it – I needed out of government subcontracting in the worst possible way – but I honestly didn’t think it would prove as stagnant as it did. In my seven years at NGS, I went from a kid off the street with a strong aficionado’s sense of the Mac to a fully certified technical consultant, ably handling Mac and PC issues alike, the guy they called on for times when you needed a satellite phone to call into an ISP to download mail but couldn’t test it until it reached Gabon or when you needed to shorten the pilot program for OS X deployment from 6 months to 3 days. Eleven years on, it’s…the same thing, only slightly less so. We don’t actually test or pilot things, we just do them and clean up the mess. Other IT people break shit and I fix it…just like 2003. I build out the Mac deployment solution using NetBoot…just like in 2004. I get called in for VIP Mac issues for people I don’t support…just like 1999. I got an Apple class and certification…just like 2002. And I got old. I was 32 when I left DC, and if you don’t think there’s a huge difference in this valley between a 32 year old workstation tech and a 43 year old workstation tech, you’re not paying attention.
The toughest thing you will ever do in this life is to stop looking back in all the wrong ways. I know that. I know that being here doesn’t diminish what I accomplished in my previous jobs. I know my life isn’t over. I know I probably have twenty years til retirement and a lot of things to do in the meantime. But I’d really love to feel like I’m not going backward, and that’s what this job makes me feel like. And if somebody dropped a quarter-million dollars cash on me to allow me time to start over doing something else, I’d take it in a second.
This is gonna be a bit of a brain dump; you can feel free just to smile, nod, and toast to the EUS and not read this if you want. Just that you struck a chord with me and I need to unload … somewhere. This seems as good a place as any, but I apologize for possibly hijacking your comments for my own catharsis (or lack thereof).
To say that I’ve been in a funk lately is an understatement, and this sort of hints at maybe why a little. There’s nothing in my life that will mean as much to me in a career sense as the time that we all spent at NGS (btw, Lou and I started there 17 years ago this past Sunday, and don’t think that I haven’t been thinking about that).
Here’s the thing … I’ve grown professionally, sort of. I’m certainly in a much better role, and I enjoy my place of business mostly, but I’m also at a complete dead-end, and I have a manager title with a manager who is my boss in an org scheme that makes no sense and frustrates me greatly. I also can’t go from here anywhere else because I’m pretty sure that nowhere else in the world is going to pay the money I make now for someone with no stupid degree. And the thing is, too, I don’t want to move up in the management chain, I don’t think. It’s a thankless, ruthless, cut-throat line of work, and I don’t know that it’s worth it.
I love the pay I get, I love the freedom to occasionally screw off online (obviously), I love my excessive amount of vacation time and my truly awesome health benefits. I even love the fact that I work for a place that is legitimately making a difference in the course of human history and people’s lives. But I don’t feel a part of it – it doesn’t and probably never will have the sense of gravitas for me that NGS ever did. I never hit phase 5 there – hell, I barely even hit phase 3 ever, let’s be honest. Here, I do things well, and there are many days that I really like it, but I definitely come at it with an “Oh well, that’s just how it is, and no amount of rage or despondency is going to change that, so might as well just go with it” attitude often.
Even at my lowest of low points in DC, it wasn’t the job that was causing that, it was the rest of my life falling apart. I loved being there, I loved the people we worked with there, and I felt a part of something in a way that I’m pretty certain I never will again achieve professionally. Part of that is because I’m the manager now, and there’s a certain amount of distance that happens naturally between staff and bosses, but a great deal of it is just that none of these people are the EUS. I like them, and I respect them, but it’s just not the same. It never will be the same.
And so I find myself often just sad that we’re not there anymore – which is stupid. It was a good thing for you to leave. It was a good thing for me to leave. The rest of my life is so much more positive and productive here than it ever was going to be there. I’m 100000% certain that you get that. And I completely get your professional gripes. Also, I really wish we could just get the band back together. Hell, we’d probably be even better now than we were then, since I think we’re all at so much better places personally than we were then. That being said, while I can’t throw you a quarter mil to start anything over (though if you find someone who’s willing to do that, please let me know because christ almighty, I have some ideas for where I could go doing something else), if you and your beautiful bride ever decide that you want a world in which the apartments are too small, the weather is atrocious, and the public transportation is overcrowded and falling apart, let me know. There’s an academic medical center on this coast that is always looking for good people – and you wouldn’t have to work for me, I promise. 😉
Sláinte!
AKA is hitting on something that has plagued me for years. Decades, actually. But instead of being a professional/career issue, it’s a personal life issue. I grew up a part of three really fantastic communities. (I’m focusing on “IRL” in person communities and ignoring the Zone for now. That’s also great, but it doesn’t adequately address what I’m going to touch upon below.) One was my “extended family” at my church, the next was my youth group, and the last one was the college marching band.
They each served several purposes, many of which were different. But they all allowed me to BELONG somewhere. To have a really strong sense of community. To be able to physically go somewhere and be among “my people.” Common experiences, people/friends in common. There are stories, laughter, sadness, loss, gain, excitement, etc.
And while many of these people are in my life still, it’s different. Our lives have gone on their own paths like they’re supposed to. So we’re in contact mostly online, and occasionally in person (much like the Zone).
And I MISS them. I miss the community. I miss just feeling like I belong here/somewhere. I miss knowing that there were regularly scheduled times we’d be together doing something we enjoyed.
I keep on looking (in my head mostly, so I’m not very successful at even looking) for something that might be my new/current group. But nothing calls out to me, or I feel like I’d be imposing on someone else’s group. I also struggle because I’m a generalist, not a specialist. There isn’t just ONE thing that interests me. Steampunk aesthetics and stuff? Sure, I like that, but do I want that to be the group I immerse myself in? Ehh, maybe? But probably not. Swing dancing? I’d love to, but I gotta get my fucking health back, but even then I’d feel like a poser. Local bicycle advocates? Maybe, but there’s the health thing again and I also don’t know if that’s much of a group/community/social thing. Some Women in Tech thing? Oh god, that sounds like an up hill battle I literally don’t have the cellular energy for. I even asked a bunch of questions of his cousin’s wife about the Junior League, trying to wrap my head around it. I finally disqualified that when I realized it was basically a sorority for grown ups. (No thank you.)
So until then, I keep on keeping on. And I try to keep up different social interactions when I can, getting together with different friends. It’s the closest approximation I have at this point.
And believe you me, AKA, I’ve thought about moving east and begging you to find him a job. 😉 Every so often it’s nice to think of a change of scenery, something new and exciting. Then I get über practical, especially when I think about my parents’ health. And then I go back to the dilemma about wanting that group/community, and I realize that moving somewhere new doesn’t necessarily address that. 😉 But it’s fun to daydream for awhile.
For both of you, I wish for happiness. I can relate to missing something you had in the past. “You can never go home again” is real and quite often unfortunate. But you both (and I) are smart and capable and resilient. At least I know we will always find a way to make something work, even if it’s not ideal yet.
So for now I only focus on trying to get my health back to its previous normal. Until I do that I can’t do too much else anyway. But I’d love to have a “crew” again. I see you two (and others) want your crew back, too, and I TOTALLY get it. You guys were all a great crew, and for that I am grateful on all y’all’s behalf.
And believe you me, AKA, I’ve thought about moving east and begging you to find him a job. 😉 Every so often it’s nice to think of a change of scenery, something new and exciting. Then I get über practical, especially when I think about my parents’ health. And then I go back to the dilemma about wanting that group/community, and I realize that moving somewhere new doesn’t necessarily address that. 😉 But it’s fun to daydream for awhile.
It definitely is fun to daydream – that, my husband, and my HLP are what keep me sane. Well, and planning vacations. And of course without my current job, I’d never be able to do any of those things. But yeah, I always want to get the band back together – and I think that’s largely why I was so overly nostalgic story-telling in Vegas.
There’s no question that our lives are all inherently better now than they were 15 years ago. But we’d never be where we are (I totally typed that as “were were were” at first. What the hell, fingers?) without those years, either.
Also uh, it may be worth throwing this out there, but we just had a Mac engineer put in his resignation. You know. Just sayin’. 😉