The whole family went to Tim & Kathy’s engagement party this weekend and we all had a great time. The kids were well behaved and there were quite a few folks there who we hadn’t seen in some time. In the evening Louise held the fort and I went back. I was then party to an impromptu whiskey tasting lesson. Mmmm! Must get me one of those whiskey guide books.
Every time I meet up with old friends I end up reflecting on my current situation, due to the standard “so what are you up to?” questions that crop up. I had to laugh (somewhat explosively, sorry) when Dave put a twist on it saying, “so I suppose you’re in a management position now…?”. Yeah, right… err… no.
Compared to some other friends, in many visible ways, the progress of my professional life has turned to molasses. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a challenging job that’s paid relatively well and I have learnt, well, everything I know about (stupidly) large scale software development while there. But… I’m still doing much the same job with the same responsibilities I was doing 5 years ago when I started at the company. Worse, my raw technical skills have not moved on at all.
Of course, having a steady job with good hours has suited me very well since Ben and Jess turned up. I don’t think I want to commit to doing more work, so perhaps I should just shut up and get on with my comfortable suburban family life. But… again with the but… it doesn’t stop me from feeling a bit left behind. Like being the last one to be picked for the football team at school (but that’s a whole other post).
Now, this is not some revelation I’ve had over the weekend. Much of the past year I’ve been broadening my knowledge and I’ve just started re-tooling my brain with a 1000 page book on C# and .NET. I’m not having a whinge here; I’m more the “so how do we fix this?” kind of guy. So, what am I saying? I don’t know, this is a blog goddamit! I don’t need to know anything!
Okay, I do know. Oh Magic Internet, please conjure up a job that pays more with lower hours. There, I said it, come mock me, arseholes.
Navel gazing aside, the party was great. I got to catch up with folks and started to have an interesting coversation with Tim on environmentalism. I was getting tired, though, and sort of petered out and couldn’t argue my (slightly confused) side, especially when posited with hard questions like “why does it matter if species die out due to climate change?”. Species aside, I would direct people to a post by Gervase Markam on carbon offsetting. Or not, the link is down at the time of writing. Interesting are his rebuttals to the comments; some of the links I will have to follow. (Whoops, almost slipped into Yodaspeak there.)