Work
I'm starting a new job (a contract, really) tomorrow. While I'm happy about it -- I like the company, the people I'll be working with, and the project itself -- I have mixed feelings about the ramifications.
I started working with computers because it was basically the path of least resistance. I was already a loner geek in my personal life, so it was really just a lateral shift into the workforce. Like many in my generation and socioeconomic stratum, I've more or less been raised to believe I could be anything I wanted to be. I've always kind of taken that for granted. Rather like an IRA account or 401K, you feel like it'll always be there, until one day you log into your account and discover the banks and government have combined in a shitstorm of ineptitude to destroy your financial solvency. Sorry... almost started a tangent there.
So now, it's several years later, and I'm still working with computer multimedia/programming. I'm not bad at it, either. But I don't feel invested. The guys in my line of work who get ahead love what they do. They design and program things in their spare time. They're always sending me links about this or that cool widget or new piece of software. I, on the other hand, don't really give a shit.
This is, I think, going to be the barrier to my moving forward in this line of work. I'm pretty much stuck where I am, because I'm just not motivated to advance. To be a coder, I think you really need to enjoy it. And I do, sometimes. There's something about seeing a piece of code come together that is extraordinarily satisfying. Stringing together sets of data to produce something useful and/or fun is great, but it's not something I get hot and bothered about.
This mild apathy, coupled with at least a middling sense of propriety, means that I end up passing on projects and contracts that I believe may be beyond my current knowledge set. Not because I think it would be too difficult, but because I know that my lack of ambition would lead to a substandard product.
To be fair, lately I haven't had a great level of interest in anything at all. Or I'll have a spike in interest, then become quickly relieved of my fascination -- kind of an emotional ADD. I don't think I'm particularly depressed or anything, I'm just... even. A zero sum. So I feel like I need a kind of jump-start somewhere to get me going again. Not sure what it is, but I'm still looking.
Mostly on Digg, which in all honesty hasn't proven an incredibly rich resource, but there's always hope.