Job

Sand in the vaseline: hopped on another bus of potential changes. Although my long weekend was relaxing and soothing (topped off by Ilse cutting my hair and administering a skullmassage), I find something has been troubling me remotely.
At work, we have this guy who is the teamleader of the infrastructure cell. Every once in a while, he throws out big gestures, loud noises and downright insults on how everything, or better, everyone is working against him. Hey, I have my bad hair days, I've cracked on stress, I have even insulted people on occasion. Difference here is: I am not convinced that I am good at management.
I cannot state that this man is doing his job well, but he is the same age as all 'important people' in the company, has experience in planning, in short: Nico is - to my feeling - more respected (although I have seen the underside of the eyeballs of the IP's when he was at it again). For sure, he will not be carefully moved out of the teamleading business like I was (and I have not been compensated for this in any matter; except maybe for my own "let'em have it" attitude).

Now I'm trying my best to be a better man than me. In 'real life' but also on the job. This means: keeping your goals in sight and acting towards them. For this, I have to suppress my enthousiasm and more specifically, my "I'm being wronged here"-alert, that causes me to take on instinctive defensive positions (ending in discussions besides the point, as I'm also pigheaded in acknowledging my wrong). BTW: it's nice to get all this in writing: not perfectly put, maybe not even all true, but a basis to refer to when I'm thinking this over again.

I also have a history at the firm (my 'demotion' from teamleadership is only an example), which shades the view of the 'more equal' animals: I'm that young one that screwed up some times and whose communicative skills are far too direct and unbalanced. And they're right, somewhat.

Do I like my job? This question IS haunting. I have taken on responsabilities (a wife, two children and a huge house) that make it impossible for me to take on my dream: what I really want to do is be expressive, and good at it. This is a childish dream, but nevertheless still mine: I want to be a rock star (yes, I would be in it for the music, but definitely also for the attention), I intend to write the next great novel and shine in theatre plays. Scientific grandeur, political success, CEO of my own booming firm. These are the exponents of my deep longing for personal greatness, which can only be measured by the count of hands clapping.
And I AM good at my job. I learn quicker than anyone else I know (sorry, Mike, you're much smarter than me, but I'm happy to say I don't know whether you're a fast learner :-) ), and this enables me to be an excellent computer program problem solver and architect. By far not the best, but damn it, a good one.
The problem is, I do not get enough positive feedback about it. I don't get off from youngsters begging me to solve their beginners' problems, or from architectural improvements that only I can see the relevance/beauty of.
Besides that, I have also gotten quite some negative feedback on other things: my outbursts of exhaustion, my tongue moving before my brain, my lack of focus: all have invoked if not 'the finger' then at least 'the look'. I have gone through some of the most shameful events of my life there.
So I'm thinking: maybe I don't like my job.

But what to trade it for?
Well, let's first see what's missing:
* I need more time to write, draw, scream, publish
* I want positive feedback.
* I want time on the job to evolve: I will not take time after work anymore to become a better but not better regarded programmer.
* I think I'm better than I'm being paid for. If nothing else, I used to be better than what I'm paid for (when I still worked a lot after hours), but I have my pride (a lot of it, actually - even Wan Laoshi noticed it)

Prft. This is hardly complete, but it is a work in progress. I have to take note of all my thoughts, so I can define the direction I wish to aim for.
Probably in a next post, I may tell about what happened with Nico. For now, just the sentence that is nagging me somewhere since yesterday:
"I realise with fright that I'm often challenging people to tell me to quit my job".

And one more thing: I have given myself permission to write anything that comes up to me, and I also wanted to write about something else than my friends. So not all of the above may be exactly true. The same goes for anything else I'm writing, and because I write what I think, and I also say what I think: it also goes for what comes out of my mouth.