{"id":2108,"date":"2014-02-12T15:31:20","date_gmt":"2014-02-12T23:31:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/?p=2108"},"modified":"2014-02-12T15:42:34","modified_gmt":"2014-02-12T23:42:34","slug":"flashback-part-68-of-n","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/?p=2108","title":{"rendered":"flashback, part 68 of n"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0“Ultimately, I think the lesson of the Olympics is that your life goes further in four years than you think. It\u2019s worth taking time to appreciate the trip.”<\/em><\/p>\n

That was four years ago. \u00a0Four 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. \u00a0But 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. \u00a0Still, it wasn\u2019t a patch on how things are four years on.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t 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\u2019t time. \u00a0But 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<\/em> to be left alone – really got me deep in the shit. \u00a0I avoided punching this particular tar baby for as long as I could, but I wound up stuck worse than Br\u2019er Rabbit ever did, and there wasn\u2019t any briar patch to beg my way into instead.<\/p>\n

It was a combination of every single work trauma I\u2019d 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 \u201cnow does anyone hear speak Windows, with some difficulty?\u201d 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\u2019d normally shoot myself in the face rather than wear). \u00a0Normal 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.<\/p>\n

And I had only two sources of comfort: my wife, infinitely patient while inwardly terrified that I was more depressed than she\u2019d 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\u2019ve ever gotten in my life, for the same reason that Roddy McCorley went to his doom smiling with his eyes glad and bright\u2026sure, he may have been hanged, but he went down knowing his crew was coming to save him – and failing that, to avenge him. \u00a0There are worse ways to go, if you\u2019re going.<\/p>\n

Eventually we powered through, but the damage was done. Doctors, chiropractors, therapists mental and physical, painkillers and antidepressants and steroids and acupuncture<\/em>, for godsakes, and a lot of hard thinking about where I want my life and my career to be headed. \u00a0No 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\u2019ve made for myself these last sixteen years.<\/p>\n

And maybe that\u2019s part of my irritation with the tech sector at large, because I\u2019ve spent most of my career outside the commercial realm. \u00a0Non-profit, education, federal government – places where you don\u2019t get unrestricted stock grants and unlimited free snacks and twice-weekly telecommuting and private transit with Wi-Fi. \u00a0I\u2019m in tech, but it\u2019s not the pretty part – it\u2019s the part where \u201cperks\u201d consist of a shuttle bus from the train station and a coffeepot you can refill yourself for free.\u00a0 I flatter myself that I\u2019ve been in the tech sector for sixteen years, but let\u2019s face it – most of the time I\u2019ve 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.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

In fairness, I was<\/em> 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.\u00a0\u00a0Most 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. \u00a0I 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.<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t out there coding projects, I wasn\u2019t out there developing apps, I wasn\u2019t any manner of engineer or designer or what have you.\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019m the IT Crowd, I\u2019m Nick Burns Your Company\u2019s Computer Guy, I\u2019m a glorified version of the bad stereotypes at Best Buy (which is one reason I\u2019ve always gone out of my way not to dress<\/em> like a computer person). \u00a0And I\u2019m getting all the crap of the high tech life with none of the rewards.<\/p>\n

Maybe it\u2019s time I decided I\u2019m<\/em> not a non-profit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0“Ultimately, I think the lesson of the Olympics is that your life goes further in four years than you think. It\u2019s worth taking time to appreciate the trip.” That was four years ago. \u00a0Four years ago, I was just wrapping up my first year at the new job. It went pretty well, as I recall; … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “flashback, part 68 of n”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2108"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2108"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2109,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2108\/revisions\/2109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}