Motivation….

Sometimes I wonder where my get up and go, got up and went.

It seems like just a few short days ago I was feverously working on the truck project, anxiously anticipating the completion of one phase after another, pressing on despite the heat and any sort of aches, pains or tiredness.

Lately though, while I know I need to get back to it, I’m finding I have less, and less, extra energy for it.

I could blame it on the additional (household) work I’m doing while my wife continues to recover from her surgery. In all honesty though, it really hasn’t been that much ‘extra’ work. Sure I’m doing a little laundry, cleaning the litter boxes for the cats, some vacuuming and, on occasion, mopping a floor or two. None of this explains my absent energy levels.

I’m beginning to worry that I could be getting depressed, again. Last time I had absolutely no energy, nothing seemed interesting to me, and I’d be perfectly happy vegetating in front of the TV for hours. About the only difference now, is that I’m happy sitting here in front of this ‘tube’ for hours.

While I like my job, the current contract, the people at the job and generally everything about my ‘professional’ life, it just doesn’t have the same “zing” it had years ago. When I first started in the IT/IS business, I was 100% wrapped up in it. I literally ‘lived’ the job.

There was so much to learn, and I felt like I never had enough time to learn all I wanted to learn. I was like an old, dried out sponge being reintroduced to water. I sucked up everything in sight, couldn’t get enough. These days, I have to force myself to ‘hit the books’ and learn new things (computer-wise), the ‘old ways’ just feel so damn comfortable!

I think part of it is I’d like one more ‘career’ before I retire from full time employment, something decidedly less ‘techie’, yet somehow as cerebral. Writing is certainly something I’ve often wanted to do, and with my first two ‘opinion’ pieces being published this year, I’ve taken one small step in that direction. Making the step to sufficient gainful monetary reward from it is yet another matter indeed.

I’ve been like this most of my life. Forever moving from one new experience to another, as soon as the current one feels ‘old’ od stale. Most folks, who don’t know me well, think I’m somehow ‘talented’, when the hard truth of the matter is, I become incredibly bored.

Yes, there I’ve said it, programming, once a source of endless fascination for me, has become, at times, stale. Not because there aren’t new challenges, there are 100’s, 1000’s even, but because I no longer have doubts about my ability to meet the challenges. In the last 20+ years, I’ve been told on countless occasions that what I was promising to do, was not possible, or that I couldn’t deliver, on time, as promised. Not once, did I ever fail to meet the challenge.

I need a new challenge… something that will give me a little ‘fear’, make me sharp again... it’s been far too long since I smelled the fear of a new challenge, one I have no clue about how to achieve. There’s an adrenalin ‘rush’ that accompanies running headlong into a new arena, not knowing how the ‘game’ will turn out.

My choices are a bit limited these days. I’m not so young as I once was, corporate doors tend not to open quite so quickly for someone past 50 looking to ‘break into’ something new. It’s expected you see, that I should be happy, just doing what I do, and to coast the next 10 or 15 years into retirement.

I just don’t know as I can do that.

No, I know I can’t.

It’s the loss of the dream I think that’s bothering me most. You see I’ve always had some kind of seemingly ‘impossible dream’. A dream that was certainly achievable, to some folks, but one that felt nearly impossible, to me.

First it was the garage, I dreamed about that all through High School, and my time in the military, then, one day, there I was standing in front of my own shop.

Next it was going back to college and getting my degree. It certainly looked impossible at the onset. There was little money, and a ton of bills. Yet, once again, eventually, there I was walking across the stage and receiving a diploma.

My first full time job out of college was teaching at a post secondary school in Syracuse. The first semester I taught primarily introductory accounting, and one flowcharting and logic class. During that semester I became enamored with computers and set my sights on learning and teaching some programming classes.

The next thing I knew, I was the lead programming instructor at the new branch location.

However, by the time that came to pass, I’d set my sights on developing applications for these new “IBM PC’s” everyone was talking about. My first project was for a trucking company, in a programming language I’d never seen, or even read about. I delivered that project, on time, and on budget, and my new ‘consulting career’ was launched.

Soon I was developing applications for a broader market, expanding, ‘making a name’ for myself in the little world I lived in.

Yet, once again the dream had shifted. I wanted to be a ‘hired gun’, the guy who came into town to build the tough projects. Soon, I was doing just that, in Tennessee, Georgia, California and then North Carolina.

I settled in once I got here. All of a sudden I was making ‘contract’ money, on a steady job, with benefits… I thought I’d finally arrived. But soon, that same old ‘call’ was back, I was uneasy, restless, looking for another challenge.

It arrived in the way of a contract with USAir to link the call accounting systems in their reservation centers with the payroll system on their mainframes. I took a sabbatical from my ‘perfect job’, risking the loss of that steady deal, just to prove I could do it. I did, and went back to the ‘job’, for another 6 or 7 years.

The restlessness has been back for a while. I thought, at first, that contracting again would feed the hunger, ease the longing, and it did, for a while.

I’m even having some fairly good success at it, more than I expected, and everyone seems very happy with the quality, and quantity, of my work. Still, this feeling there’s something else I should be doing, that haunts me.

The worst thing is, there’s no ‘dream’ this time. No clear vision of what’s next on the horizon. It may just be that it’s missing that bothers me most. I don’t know, if having a dream, that’s always just a little out of reach, is a good, or a bad thing. I just know, it’s something that’s always been with me, as far back as I can remember.

It’s entirely possible I’m simply mourning the loss of an old ‘friend’, an ally that was always on my side. It could be that this is simply part of the process of life and it took me longer than most to stop dreaming about what’s next.

I’m not ready to stop dreaming.

I’m not ready to stop finding ways to make life, and living exciting and new, everyday.

For now, I’ll keep writing, it gives me a lot of pleasure to do it, it always has. Writing, for a living, is the one, long term dream I’ve had, I’ve never pursued. I hate rejection, and I know writing can be a life filled with rejections, which is probably the one reason I’ve never gone after it.

Writing, like every other dream I’ve gone after, is also something I can work towards without giving up my ‘day job’.

Maybe, just maybe, I’m already living my dream. I’m writing and you folks stop by and read it; all that’s missing is the ‘money’. Truthfully, money has never really motivated me to do anything; I’ve always done everything because I loved doing it. Money was always secondary to me (which explains why I’ve never made a ton of it), it was the ‘work’ that got me out of bed in the morning.

So here I sit, having come full circle. Feeling lost, directionless, when I sat down and now actually smiling in the realization that I’m doing, exactly, what I’ve always wanted to do.

Thank you all for making it so much fun for me to do it!