Moving Forward
I’ve been feeling somewhat dissatisfied with my job lately. Remember how I used to looooooove it? Yeah, not so much anymore. I’ve kind of fallen into a rut where I do the things I know (which also happen to be entirely routine and mindless) and I never have the opportunity to learn more. Or really, more importantly, I never take/make the opportunity to learn more. It would be nice if it were that simple, that I merely have to say, “Damn it, I’m going to learn PHP and you can’t stop me!” but it’s not. It’s hard to just “learn” something without a context (and I’m having a hard time fitting myself into the existing context) and it’s also hard to take the time to learn something when there’s plenty of other no-learning-required work to be done.
I had lunch with my old boss a couple weeks ago and bitched at length about my job (as I warned him, he caught me on a bad week) and it was really good because we talked about lots of tech stuff and he reminded me about what excites me about doing this work. And when I complained about not knowing the stuff I need to know, he said, “Well, you can learn it.” When I made a doubtful face he scoffed and said, “What, you think there’s something that you just can’t learn?” Which made me laugh because of course not. Of course I don’t think there’s stuff I “just can’t learn.” And that really started to put things into perspective.
Yesterday I gained a whole bunch more perspective when I was reading an article about a woman running a web development business who worked to build a community of non-techie women helping each other with tech stuff through her business. After reading the article I sighed with envy and thought about how I would like to build a community of non-techie women helping each other with tech stuff through a web development business, and then I let my brain wander for a minute over joy I get from web development work. After a few minutes of wandering I sighed, shut down those thoughts, and briefly lamented over the fact that I can’t do this work that I love to do because I just don’t know enough/don’t have time/don’t know where to begin/am so far behind others who do know/don’t want to handle billing/blah blah bullshit.
And then it occurred to me that I really can’t go on like this. I am really unhappy with my job, like to the point that I start crying when I tell people that I’m unhappy with it. It could be so much more than it is, but the combination of being stuck in a rut and the change in management that greatly shifted the atmosphere in the department makes me realize the importance of working toward something that is more meaningful and exciting, and that’s not what I have now.
So the end result is that even though I don’t know enough to start my own web development business/don’t have time/don’t know where to begin/am so far behind others who do know/don’t want to handle billing/blah blah bullshit, I have to push past all that and do it anyway. Because that’s really what I want to do and working toward that is going to make me happy.
It’s hard for me to imagine it, it’s hard for me to imagine myself in a place where I could support my family in my expensive city solely off the income from my own little business, it’s hard to imagine so very many aspects of what it would mean to run a business at all, but I can think of small steps, I can think of what I can do right now, and if that makes me feel like I’m moving toward something more productive and interesting, then that’s probably enough to keep the tears at bay for now.
My three initial goals toward starting my own web development business:
- Subscribe to the feeds of some blogs discussing web development. I know that the blogs I read shape a lot of what I think about during the day and refocusing my thoughts toward current issues in web development can only be a good thing.
- Clean my office. My office has lately become the landing spot for all manner of crap in my house and it’s entirely unpleasant to spend time in there. Considering that it’s supposed to be my special work space, I really need to realign my priorities toward keeping it clean.
- Get the tedious assignments done for my current school course so that I can move on to the next, much more promising course. The current coursework is mirroring my tedious day job and it’s taking me a ridiculously long time to force myself to do what feels like busy work.
Those three goals feel small and attainable and possible and it makes me happy to think about getting them accomplished. The whole big picture is hugely overwhelming and it’s not even clear to me whether it’s realistic, but if I just keep taking small steps toward it then maybe I’ll ultimately get there. And if not, then at least I’ll get somewhere…and maybe I’ll be happier along the way.