It all becomes clear

I was leaving the focus group this morning, a cool 200.00 in hand for one hour of semi-informed discussion ... when it hit me.

Suddenly I knew exactly what to do with my life. A person such as myself makes a certain set of known transitions. First, your career focusses on technical work. You hone your skills on existing systems and structures, and make them work better. Then you're called upon to design large, complicated systems that work well together - you get a piece of the larger picture and you make sure it works with everything else.

And then comes the bone chilling reality of finished software product. This is the hardest, and most painful moment for a person in my field. To let the software stand on its own - no consulting, no hourly billing, no requirements, no specifications, no deadlines, no maintenance, no glitches to be resolved. It either runs, or it doesnt. They either like it, or they don't. Trust me, this is the hardest moment for a computer programmer (and in my case, also, a research guy) to face. Because all of it adds up to nothing if they don't actually use it.

You go through stages in your career. Things that work for other products - code that helps other software to run better. Maintenance programs. Crash recovery. Optimization. Its fun and profitable. Like a spare parts business, there is always work there because there is always something that could work better, or something that is going to need work.

But thats not where I am going. No. Not at all. Because all of that can be done by someone reasonably attuned to the work - who is willing to look at the edge of a multibillion dollar industry, and take home 70k a year happily. Trust me, I would be happy to live that life. I like too many other things - dvd's, games, etc. - that have absolutely nothing to do with the expression of my own life on this planet - and I could waste my time doing them, or a linear combination of them, and other things - indefinitely. Blogging, is in fact, one of those things - if it is not foccused. So where does it all go? What could be the answer to what a person should do - who is reasonably well educated, well versed in prose, prosody, and poems - understands, creates and appreciates art... an avid gamer, an adventurous mate and armchair scientist. What is the end game. What am I going to do for my final act?

I am going to make myself obsolete.


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