Blogged-down, Blogcrastinating, & Blogstipated
...are a few words that could describe my past year (or so) of blogging activity. I have so many thoughts zipping around in my mind that I just cant find time or motivation to go code, post, and purge them - I feel completely mentally constipated. Somehow I always seem to be bogged-down on focusing on my projects at work or busy with the family that it leaves little time for serious contemplation or even the occasional playful troll. I really must purge these thoughts & ideas in the form of blog posts before I burst!!
To those close to me, its obvious why my blogging trendline is on a downward curve - the new job has been keeping me very busy. Its not like I work for a sweatshop - I work in one of the best development environments I have enjoyed over my 11+ year career. The problem is that my last job led me down a different path that strayed too far away from my software development roots. My last 5 years in corporate servitude was at least 3 years too long!
Prior to joining the big-pink-empire, I had never overstayed my tenure at a job since college. My usual stint was 9-18 months, with nice progression to more and more challenging positions on each subsequent job change. On one hand, I feel blessed that in 2001, at the peak (?) of the DotCom Bust, I was able to find a good transition away from Homebuilder.com. Many of my coworkers and friends were out of work for a good period of time in those days, some went into consulting or contract work, and many envied the job stability I had achieved. But, I got too comfortable in my nice cozy upscale corporate world (even in formal dress code) and tried to become the good corporate citizen. I attempted to do all the ladder-climbing & political maneuvers necessary to succeed in the brick & mortal world - my lack of political savviness became the problem to solve and the challenge I had to overcome. Eventually I did learn to succeed, only to discover that the ladder was just an Escherian illusion that could have kept me chasing my tail for the rest of my career.
Today, I am where I want to be, where I need to be - back in true software development. However, I am not yet happy with my current skillset and productivity. It's nowhere near where it was 5 years ago. Even though I maintained my fundamental skills and learned a ton through independent study and prototyping, most ov my time was spent practicing & playing, but never implementing. As a result, I'm less experienced with the "new thinking" in software development than I would like. I'm playing catchup to old ideas surrounding design patterns, coding practices, and development methodologies while new trends continue to evolve and pass me by. Lets face it, the rate of growth and maturity of new software development technology and tools is at an all time high. However, rather than rejoicing at the plethora of new opportunities, I find myself full of anxiety over my inability to simultaneously learn the hundreds of new (and new twists on old) technologies and concepts that I want to learn while continuing to meet my responsibilities at work and home.
Partly I blame David and my new coworkers at Telligent. If I were surrounded by mediocrity, then I would feel less insecure, but instead I'm surrounded by dedicated, insanely passionate developers who each have exceptional skills in their own areas of expertise. Every time I hear about one of their projects, I am impressed, inspired, and motivated. Then, I look at my own long dormant list of "holy cow" project ideas and plethora of half-started neato gadgets, and become depressed again at my own inadequacy.
Perhaps my expectations are too high, or maybe my motivation-level is too low. The reality is that I'm 37, have a wife, an 11year old son, and too many toys at home to distract me away from my past entrepreneurial dreams. Ah, if only I could be 25 again and have all that spare time, and fewer responsibilities...
Anyhow, if your still reading this useless drivel, then you must be either narcissistic or, perhaps more sadly, find too much of this familiar. Either way I should wrap-up this stream of thought. So, I am challenging myself to break out of this rut, take some blogging-laxative, get some Ridilin for my distracted dreams, and start crawling out of this pit of techno-despair so I can enjoy the fun of working in this resurgent era of DotCom v2.0 (with ASP.NET 2.0 no less).