Just Another Manic ... Tuesday?

I think I'm just going through a rough patch. I've been letting stupid shit get to me, which I'm too old and too experienced to be doing. Nothing major, nothing dramatic, but I'm getting a full head of steam when I should just roll with stuff. Some of it's work-related, some of it's paranoia, some of it's anxiety, and some of it is just that I feel so busy all the time.

Summers are pretty crazy around our house, and I'd bet that's actually pretty common, especially in cases in which the household features multiple children and two adults that both work (me, full time, her, part time + grad school). Summers are just busy.

That just seems wrong, though. I get the logic of why summers are so busy, but in my mind, summers should be when I slow things down and enjoy myself. If I were to pick one season in which to be busy, I'd pick winter. Winter is typically a pretty miserable season anyway, and it'd be nice to keep myself too occupied to notice. 

I need to avoid statements like that, actually. Saying things like that just locks my mind into a single expected outcome. I need to be open to the possibility that winter can be great.

ANYWAY.

I've had about my fill of aggravation today. One of my personal challenges is that I lose perspective when I reach a certain level of aggravation, and I can't tell if someone is just trying to fuck with me or if they're just going about their business. I need to be a professional, not lose perspective, and just go about my business.

And my temper has been ... bad, lately. I haven't melted down, blown up, or anything like that, but I've had too many situations recently in which I've had to bite my tongue, recuse myself, or just leave the room for a bit. Most of them have been professional. What's tough, too, is that I work with a solid team of super-smart people, and most of the time, they're right on about stuff, which means that I need to be checking myself, and figuring out what's malfunctioning within me.

One x-factor is that I quit smoking about 5-6 weeks ago (maybe a little more), after over a little over 20 years of being a smoker. I'm thrilled with that choice, and I'm not going back, and I can't tell if that's having an impact.

Maybe it'll pass.

And it's not like things are bad right now. I'm letting minutiae dominate my view, but I'm also aware of the positives in life. My job still rocks, and when I'm not getting in my own way, I really enjoy it. My wife is amazing, and that's not just lip service. I really feel lighter and more at ease when we're able to spend time together. My kids are just fantastic and are, in many ways, charting the course for this family. I still love my gaming, when I have time to do it a little on the weekends. TIME. Ack.

I'm glad I'm recording this here, though. It'll be interesting to compare in a year, and see how I feel.

On the plus side, I am going to see Garbage tonight, for the first time. We (buddy and I) were supposed to see them like 20 years ago. They were gonna open for Smashing Pumpkins, and we were gonna leave after their set, so we didn't have to sit through the Pumpkins again (we'd seen them a few times, and they were also 'blah'). Unfortunately, the new keyboardist in the Pumpkins died, the tour got delayed, and Garbage went and did their own thing. Another time, I was gonna see them with a girlfriend who loved Garbage, but she and I had been in a pretty toxic pattern for like three years, so I dumped her via voicemail right before her first time seeing her favorite band ever. Yeah, that was a totally shit move, and it came back on me, as it should have.

Regardless, here we are, 20 years later, and I'm finally seeing them tonight. I've been a big fan for a long time, and I'm looking forward to it, even if it means I'll be exhausted tomorrow. That's gonna be the hardest part, actually.

Anyway, here's hoping the rest of today and tomorrow is smooth sailing. I really need a breather from all the intensity.

-Blaine

The Dev Life

I'm a developer. That still feels a little weird when I say it. I wanted it for so long, and now I've had it, for two and a half years. I'm a little old for being at this stage in my development career, because I took such a circuitous route getting here, and that bothers me a bit, but I try not to let it. I have a much richer background than most developers.

The short version is that I worked a string of shit jobs, eventually working my way into shit job management, before finally going to college when I was 21.

I graduated with a BA in Fiction Writing from Columbia College Chicago, and went right back to shit job management, only now I was higher-ranking and much better paid.

After a few years of that, I took a huge pay cut, and actually did help desk for a university for a while, which was actually really, really enjoyable. If you ever get the chance to work at a university, do it. It was a really fun, magical time for me.

The money, though, is in corporate. I was eventually lured away by the siren call of corporate cash money, and worked help desk for a short time there, before eventually being promoted to a SysAdmin job.

I'm getting ahead of myself, though.

The reason I made the jump was because I saw it as a chance to break into development, and that opportunity was there.

Instead, I chose to demonstrate my value by jumping into the support side, because that's where the help was desperately needed, and I knew I could bring value.

I taught myself things like how to build a domain, the ins and outs of Active Directory, and how servers work. Before long, as I said, I was suddenly a SysAdmin, which is somewhere between 'God' and 'rockstar.' You're always the smartest guy in any given meeting. When shit hits the fan, you're the one that steps up, and saves the day.

It's a super-cool job, and an easy way to stay employed, but it lacked the creative nuance I wanted. And the hours can, depending on how well-run your shop is, kinda suck. For me, at first, they were awful, but then, after an organizational change, they improved drastically.

Regardless, after a few years, it was time for a change.

Fall 2013, an opportunity presented itself. A buddy from the dev team here was leaving, and I quietly put in some feelers. I got paid one of the highest compliments I've ever received in that process. "We were hoping you'd still be interested."

For political reasons, they couldn't ask me if I was interested.

Anyway, after some figuring, it all worked out, and I went from being a SysAdmin to an entry-level developer.

Since then, it's been a crazy and fascinating position. As a SysAdmin, you question every step you take, everything you do, and you never, ever, move forward without some kind of escape vector or rollback plan.

Development, if your TFS is well-managed, is free of a lot of those constraints, when you're talking about actual development code.

The biggest change, though, for me, was being told I did something wrong all the time.

In the infrastructure world, I didn't hear that often. I wasn't perfect, but ... well, you don't do bi-weekly releases. In the dev world, the biggest challenge for me has been the emotional side of 'bugs.' I'm wired in such a way that every mistake I make feels devastating, and I try very hard to learn from each one, self-flagellating and burning inside. What's become apparent is that is not a helpful approach. I've had to dial it back a bit, and just kinda act like 'it is what it is, now let's fix some shit.'

Of course I still care, but I've toned down my internal reaction. I still learn from it.

What's interesting, too, is that you're not always learning from your own mistakes when fixing bugs. Sometimes, someone made a mistake YEARS ago, and your change just revealed it. That kinda shit actually happens quite often.

The biggest thing, though, and this was good advice from my boss, is really testing the hell outta your own shit before you lob it over to the QA folks. This is where I think I'm focused the most on improving.

And I tell you what, too. I've seen guys learn to staple together various frameworks and call themselves developers (I actually stole that phrasing from a fellow developer and friend), but really learning the craft takes years. I'm at about two and a half now, and I'm only recently really feeling like I can kinda handle the basics of most projects and situations.

It's a fucking great job, though. It's, for me, a perfect balance between logic and art. And my team is just awesome. I love my team, and they tolerate me.

What's amazing is visualizing the solution and then just building it out. People do this kinda shit as games, for fun, and I get PAID to do it. It's awesome.

So, yeah, it took me a while to get here, but I've got years of management and systems administration in my toolset, along with the development experience that I'm building. That'll all coalesce into some kinda super-job at some point, but for now, this gig kicks ass.

If you're even thinking of going into development, just do it. Get the free version of Visual Studio, SQL Server Express, hit up some of the training on Microsoft Virtual Academy, and learn C#. From there, move on to web development in ASP.NET, or maybe game dev, or whatever you want. If I can claw my way into this career, anyone can.

I think the basic lesson, though, is that this is also the hardest job I've had. It's not the worst hours, it's not the harshest conditions, in fact, it's great. But it's really hard. I'm not used to feeling like I'm in over my head, and I'm not used to being humbled, and this job doles that out constantly.

At the same time, it lets me be creative, and if I think I have a better way of doing something, I'm free to just go try it, which is awesome. It may even be the best part.

OK, I'm going on longer than intended. My job has been on my mind lately, and writing about things usually helps me clarify things, which it definitely did today. If you're still reading at this point, thanks for making it this far.

As a side note, I really wish my Cardinals stabilize their fucking pitching. Holy cow. In terms of offense and pitching, this is the opposite team from last season. Crazy.

OK, back to work!

-Blaine

PS - I REALLY miss smoking, but I really don't. Also, fuck bugfix week.