Everything In Between

I am in a state of iffyness about my job. Or rather, about its environment. I like the computer work a lot. I love having work that involves command lines and requires not only an understanding of advanced computing but also stresses learning new stuff all the time. That part is amazing and I really enjoy it. But I am having a really, really, really hard time with the formal dress and the office environment. I can even get behind the desire to look nice and sharp, and damnit, I think I do look pretty good and sharp in my work clothes, but what’s to make me appear sharp if there’s no freakin’ laid back and everyone’s constantly so uptight about everything?

It is more than foreign. It is alien. It feels a little bit like I’m a bird under water, or a fish out of water, or some such analogy intended to imply an absurdly misplaced object. I don’t feel like an office denizen, and, more disturbing, is the fact that I honestly don’t think I ever want to feel like one either.

I keep trying to make the situation better in small ways like keeping a sense of humor about myself and the work and the situations we find ourselves in — like my Family Feud research notes which fell totally flat — but the most I get out of it is perhaps a guarded smile from the guy at the next cubicle. The office is so amazingly bland. All the furniture is beige and the entire floor is filled with a grid of cubes. The only thing worth looking at all is the New York City skyline out the window. At least my cube is right next to the window. Of course, the desk and computer is situated such that I have to sit with my back to the skyline, an interior design decision I can only imagine was made by some “productivity” company that figured people would be more productive if they didn’t look out the window at the river too often.

So basically I have found the other side of my golden coin. Now I have the salary I want and deserve (though why stop here?), the job is technically demanding and offers tons of opportunity for growth and learning, but the environment is all wrong, in almost every single way. Past jobs were shitty money (especially for my level of expertise), way too easy or too dead-ended, but the environment was better. Why is it so hard to find a balance for these things? I refuse to believe that I am just that hard to please.

And I am having a hugely difficult time pursuing my own projects, too. In the past it was still a challenge, but it was one I enjoyed because I was practicing at it and was ultimately successful, but now I only eek out little things here and there instead of the (relatively) awesome personal accomplishments of the past. It’s because back then I could do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. Now I can only do whatever I want between certain hours of the day, and only if I’m not too tired or actually feeling up for it at the right time.

I used to stay up all night and do personal projects. I can’t do that anymore. I would get all into these projects and they would distract me and keep my occupied. I’d like that, and I’d also like working on the project. But now I can’t schedule things that way anymore because of work. God, I hate having a 9-5 job. I hate it so much sometimes it’s just unreal. It’s so fucking not true what people tell you when you’re little: “You can do whatever you want when you’re grown up.” What a load of crap that is. It should be, “You can do whatever you want on your own time when you’re grown up, but you’ll also sell a large chunk of your time to other people for money.”

I keep telling myself things will get better, but how likely is that really if what I’m really having a problem with is the environment of the place to begin with? If the environment were really awesome at this job then I’d probably feel differently about it. I think. I don’t know. Maybe I wouldn’t and I’d just find something else to complain about. Damnit, then, why can’t I find something to do or make that I enjoy doing and makes me the money I want to live off of the way I want to?

This past week, business took me into the town (city?) of Bethesda in Maryland. As it turns out, this is remarkably close to Washington DC. It’s a mere half hour to Dupont Circle on the Metro. This worked out extremely well, because Sara wanted to visit a friend who lives there now and so we were able to spend two nights in Washington DC together.

The first night we went out for our classic wander-and-dinner faire, scoring Indian food and some wine blocks away from Dupont Circle, which has road-trip of SUmmer 2005-specific memories regarding broken escalators. The second was a lovely dinner at her aunt, uncle, and cousin’s house in one of the residential areas by Foxhall street. I even got to grab a third dinner with her at the restaurant in the back of Kramerbooks on Thursday night. (I didn’t even realize there was a restaurant in there.)

This was, by far, the best business trip ever. It was also the first business trip I took that landed me in any kind of decently-sized metropolitan area. Trips like this were precisely why I was originally excited about this job’s travel requirements.

Unfortunately, however, it appears I’ll end up local (that is, in Jersey City) for what is slated to be “at least 6 months or so,” according to one of the managers. This is either a really good thing if the opportunity to learn and grow presents itself in an environment I can do that in, or a really bad thing if the opposite occurs. I’m a little nervous about the potential for the latter.

It would be unfair to my previous post, however, if I didn’t mention that even the work week (and the Monday holiday spent working) was not entirely unpleasant. I learned a ton because I got to do things new to me and had several fellow employees to serve as extremely helpful (and gracious) technical resources that helped me out. And there were no customers present the whole time–everyone seems to get more uptight around the presence of customers, which makes sense.

Anyway, all in all, I find myself craning my neck back at Union Station as the train starts moving away from Washington DC. I’d love to come back here on another trip, and I’m glad I got the opportunity to spend a week–and some much-needed time with my girlfriend–there this past week.

The last week or so at work has been a bit of a rollercoaster. I’ve felt good, then bad, then good again, and then bad again, back and forth in more ways than one. The company is very stressed right now as we are less than two weeks from a brand new acronym I encountered: EOFY (End of Fiscal Year). As part of the effort to improve things, I was first asked to work the Martin Luther King Jr. day holiday, which I (somewhat reluctantly) agreed to do after my boss offered me to “comp” me a day off some other time. However, then I was asked to also work straight through the next weekend. Twelve solid days of work.

I said no. I’m a little worried about that. Fact of the matter is, I’m just not that devoted. I see no real benefit from working more. I don’t earn more money and I’m not exactly having a ball. Frankly, I can’t understand why the people who said yes actually said yes. I did feel the pressure to say yes, and though I still don’t know if I would have done so, the fact that saying yes would have meant that the last time I saw Sara until she returned from Australia would have been tomorrow closed the argument. There was just no way I was going to give up the last weekend I could spend time with her in over a month for…that.

Consolingly, Sara told me I could explain that this situation isn’t typical and so my refusal is a special case. But the more I think about it, the more I don’t want to say that because if I am asked to do many more of those such things, I intend to say no just as often. My job should only be my life if I am doing only what I want to do and nothing else. There’s so little reason in this day and age why people should ever, ever do anything (significant) they don’t genuinely want to that I’m growing increasingly frustrated seeing such pointless things around me and as a part of my life so often.

I love technology and I love learning more about it, solving problems, working on implementing solutions, and documenting them thoroughly. There’s no question I’m better off today than I ever have been before. But it’s not good enough. I’m still doing and putting up with so much of other people’s bullshit that I shouldn’t have to–that nobody should ever have to–that I know I’ve still got a long way to go.

The way I see it, there are only two ways I can ever make doing what I want and only what I want a reality. The first is to work for myself, freelance or start-up company or something. For the several years that I did that, I was actually much happier for a much longer time than I’ve ever been when I worked as an employee of any company, big or small. I think that is because I focused on solely what I wanted to do and deemed worth doing. The only issue was that my income was not steady and ultimately not profitable enough to sustain a living doing the kind of web development I was doing. I’m not going to be an exceptional web developer; there are too many other people out there who are far better at that than I am. I lack the graphic design skills to be a designer and I lack the programming skill to be a one-man developer of anything beyond small projects.

The only other way to ever do only what I want, then, is to join an open source or open source-like organization where I get paid for it. Unfortunately, I am too unskilled and thus unknown for anyone to be that interested in me right now. Hopefully, this will eventually change, and I’ll get better and better and become a uniquely qualified individual for some uniquely specialized task that I enjoy doing. However, there is no doubt in my mind that this will never happen if I work for a company that still functions in the old-model of thinking, closed source and closed minds. It is a requirement that I task myself to ensure that I only receive tasks that I enjoy, and that is only possible in groups when collaboration is voluntary.

I am also not yet over being incredibly bitter and resentful at the world at large and at certain past situations in particular for making this sort of thing a constant battle for me. The majority of my life has been a constant struggle to make others see the most basic, fundamental, obvious things. I resent that most of my memories of growing up are about fighting with parents and teachers about my own well being. I am angry that I have had to parent myself to such a degree that I feel so much older than everyone my own age. I felt like I was 20 at 12, like 30 at 16 and now like 45 at 22. I am tired of fighting.