This is the final leg of my career as a software developer. I know that because I made a promise to myself. This is the kind of promise that I wouldn’t have dared to make even a few short years ago. This revelation will probably surprise more than a few of you, especially in light of all the kvetching I’ve been doing about my career for such a long while.
That promise was this: This will be my last job with my last company in this career. I promise to never again hate myself enough to convince myself that going through yet another series of bullshit technical interviews makes sense. It won’t ever make sense again. I needed a final chance to bridge the gap between what has come before and what may come in the future. This is that gap.
Don’t get me wrong, I love creating things. The act of creation makes me feel downright divine at times. Creating software has long served as my primary creative outlet. However as they say in Stephen King’s “Dark Tower” series, “The World Has Moved On”. That is very much the case in this situation. I’m neither on board with what the tech industry chooses to do nor am I on board with how they choose to do it. In light of this strong, almost primordial belief that I’m saddled with, at some point I have to decide that I love and respect myself enough to act on it.
So today I’m publicly committing to do just that. Of course since this is an anonymous blog, on some level this commitment doesn’t mean shit, at least not in the traditional manner in which some individual or group thereof would be appointed to monitor and report on my level of progress towards this goal in the forthcoming years. But there is a rub: I’m making this promise not just to myself or you and not in some bullshit fleeting manner either. That’s because its a promise from the heart to the heart. It’s what I really want and if I’m being honest what I really need.
So you might surmise from the previous paragraphs that the new job isn’t going that great. On the contrary its going pretty good. I’m getting acclimated and beginning to have a positive impact here and there and that makes me feel good. Even now in the twilight of this career I desperately desire to feel valued. Despite this ember of success, which could burgeon into something far greater if properly nurtured, I know that I must plan my departure. I have to leave the mistress of tech before she decides to leave me. The former option leaves me in a position where I will once again travel through time and space like a leaf on the breeze whereas the later option will leave me a broken and bitter man who spends the reminder of his career, perhaps his life, finding poor souls to sharpen his axe of bitterness against.
These statements may strike you as exaggeratory but let me assure you, they are not.
As it stands right now, my first attempt to reinvent myself will involve writing. While the details are unbelievably vague as the specifics of the idea have yet to fully form in my head, I’m almost certainly going to write a novel. The details of the story within the pages has not yet made itself known to me, but the theme of the story is one that I am very well-acquainted with: The joy and tragedy of creation. The subsequent rise and fall of ideas, beliefs, tools and techniques that propel those who excel and damn those who refuse to believe that the party is over.
Will the novel ever get published? Hell if I know. I’ve already written one book which I self-published. Not a novel, but I won’t go into anymore detail than that as doing so skirts the boundaries of operational security I have promised myself that I would maintain here. Obviously given that this transition directly revolves around my ability to make a living and to put food on my family’s table, I would love for whatever I create to be published.
Alas, part of me wonders if there is a market for slightly-enlightened and tragic pontificators within this world we all share. Much like tech part of me is deeply scared that I may be a bit too displaced from the standard bearers of my chosen craft for my own good. But the best thing I can do for myself is to put all of that aside. This heart yearns to create. It yearns to speak. It yearns to be heard. One way or another it will do so, even if it must do so from the gates to hell itself.
The medium is less relevant than the sharing of the water with those who would drink. Because at the end of the day, that’s what life and relationships are really all about. Let me assure you dear reader, that is a conclusion that I share with you which emerged out of stark sobriety, because this may be the most serious thing that I have ever written to date.
I love myself so I’m going to do do right by myself. The timeline here is vague, but I don’t anticipate cutting loose of tech for at least another five years (though perhaps the universe has other plans…), ten at the most. That gives me plenty of time to get my shit together and give this a go a few times before I come back here and post something equally as poignant yet so much more terrible.
That day won’t ever come. I swear it. To you but to myself most of all.