So, I may be risking my anonymity here, but I want to say that, after 22 years at the same job, I finally admitted to myself last month that I am going to go forward with this engineering gig. After college, I was a little down on the math/science/engineering thing, but I needed to pay the rent, so I got a temporary job writing software that I planned to keep for about three years until I stopped hating engineering and could reevaluate whether or not to go to grad school.
But my feeling that I was just a quick decision away from embarking on a bold new future kept me in a mindset that I now believe was atypical:
[ul]
[li]I’d need some sort of recommendation from my supervisors, so I needed to walk a fine line, making sure that they knew that I was a hard worker with a good attitude, and that when I eventually left, that it would be clear that it wasn’t anything negative about my job that made me leave. Rather, it would be because I’d made some fundamental decision about my life’s direction that just didn’t include writing software, so there’d be no bad feelings about my leaving.[/li][li]I needed to show that, even with a job that I wasn’t particularly passionate about, I could work like a dog and kick butt. That meant that I always viewed myself as something of a new-hire, always learning new things and eagerly accepting new assignments. An odd result of this is that people never believe me when I tell them how old I am, usually thinking I’m about ten years younger than my actual age.[/li][li]I needed to show that I was creative, so I frequently stepped outside the box and tried to address the issue that our software development was slow, chaotic and expensive. In the process I developed a [big important thing]. (This helped me coast through periods of unreliable attendance due to problems with depression). IAC, it became increasingly difficult for me to talk with cow-orkers about wanting to go out and find my ‘real’ career, since I was getting so much acclaim at work and risked seeming a mite ungrateful.[/li][li]I needed to find a career that I actually liked, so I frequently took stock of my situation to see what was good and what was bad. In the process, I came to the conclusion that engineering is actually incredibly creative – we have to think in abstract terms, design things that don’t exist (yet), and solve all manner of problems. Engineers who don’t think that way are missing out.[/ul][/li]Note – my efforts to have managers think well of me have not necessarily resulted in my being a total brown-noser. I realized early in my career that their job was to make all of us underlings work more effectively, so I frequently sit down with my managers du jour and tell them what I think they’re doing right and what I think they’re doing wrong. With one exception, all of my managers have commented that they value my honesty.
Note – that doesn’t mean I’m not a brown-noser. I am; it’s just not the largest component of my work persona. Despite people at work thinking that I’m “above” politicking, a good 10-20% of my interactions with supervisors involve my looking for and pressing their buttons.
What’s my point? This is my career, and since it’s part of The Story of Groo, I must integrate it into the vague images I always had of what life would be like when I finally found myself.
So, (I’m really getting to the point here), I should just accept the fact that I’m a fairly odd person, and that’s not going to change. My frequent bouts with depression cause me to always use up any and all PTO (vacation+sick leave), and when I run out, I start taking days off without pay. And since I know I’m going to burn up all my PTO, I never plan vacations – I need to save them for the inevitable days where I hide under my covers. But … if my current job is my real job, I need to accept that (a) I just need more time off than most people, and apparently work well enough that my employer accepts this, so (b) why not just schedule a vacation, knowing full well that I’ll end up taking the entire time off without pay? I’m 45 and have gone on two vacations in my adult life (not counting weekend ski trips, weddings and funerals). Maybe I should go on more vacations.
Another thing: I’ve finally realized that my job was not making me depressed; being depressed was making me depressed, and I was mistaking correlation with causation. (Same story with anxiety – I can get anxiety attacks just buying groceries, so I can do anything and not experience any more or any less anxiety; it’ll always be there. People think I’m relatively fearless because I give lots of presentations, ride a motorcycle and occasionally jump out of airplanes; they don’t realize that I’m just desensitized because I’m always feeling fearful.)
Also, when I really want to go for a bicycle ride along the beach, but it’s a Tuesday afternoon, howzabout I just go ride my bike? My irregular attendance history has shown that people can cope with my being MIA for awhile, and I always make up the time.
Basically, how about I start living my life right now?