RewindResetRedefine

My first blog entry came out very heavy, laden with emotions. This one will be a bit different. I might come across as a whiny bitch but, hey, it’s my space.

I’ve had an amazing career. I took unconventional detours, just went with the flow, and yet progressed steadily enough. I have enjoyed the company of brilliant, humble and helpful teammates, always got the right amount of appreciation & reward for my work. And even after nearly two decades in the profession, it’s not particularly slowing down either. So all in all, it’s great (unless this post jinxes it). BUT...(I did say I’ll whine)…I’ve reached a juncture where everything’s perfect yet, nothing’s right.

To explain, I’ll need to give a bit of history, explain my relation with my career. I found coding when I was 10 and it quickly became my purpose in life. I used to say that I have been sent to Earth to code; I know cringy teenage stuff but guess what, you were a cringy teen too so stfu. Anyway, I enjoyed it, was good at it and was in a position to create the right opportunities for myself. The first decade of my career was me just having fun. I often joked that I shouldn’t even be getting paid. But aside from having fun, I always had clarity on what next and why. What next was easy enough: I just asked myself, “what sounds interesting to work on”, tried to find it and for most parts, found. And the why was even simpler: why not? When you don’t much care about building a career, progressing to the next title, getting a salary bump, then truly, having fun is all that’s left, isn’t it? The unencumbered joy of doing, of building, of finding the next group of geniuses I have no business being in the same room with. This joy ride lasted all the way to 2020, weaved around big-tech and startups, spanned two continents, saw several personal milestones, yada, yada, yada. I know it sounds ominous but no, it wasn’t the pandemic which killed my fun.

Summer of 2020 was the last time I had clarity. I knew the domain I wanted work in and for the first time in my life, I craved a title. I got the domain and got the title, got more pay than I expected [side note: I had very low expectations; so low in fact that the next year my manager had to a call a meeting with me and HR to tell me I have fallen below the minimum at my level and my salary needs to be adjusted upwards to remain in policy]. And ever since then, I am unable to get back this clarity. Somedays I work because I need the money (in case you haven’t figured, I haven’t made a lot of it), somedays because the work is not uninteresting, somedays because some tall leader in Big Corp wants to hear from me!, somedays because I know I will miss the people I work with. Somedays I want to leave because I miss being hands-on, somedays because I don’t want to speak to some tall leader in Big Corp, somedays because I feel jaded of what the tech industry has become. But mostly because, I don’t feel satisfied. I just don’t. All my happy moments are short-lived; the only permanence is the unease of not knowing what I want and why.

I tried to describe this to my therapist, saying, unlike the old me, I am relying on external signals: salary, title, shabashi (praise), respect; because I seem to have lost my inner flame. I don’t even know what that means, really, but it’s the closest I have come to articulate how I feel these days. It’s severly disorienting when the invisible force which has been steering you all these years, suddenly disappears. I didn’t even know I had it, much less have a clue on how to get it back. So now I am stuck somewhere between mulling dramatic changes just to shake things up or just drag myself to work, seeking the next dopamine hit from these external signals.

I want to acknowledge that this sounds tone-deaf. In a time with so many people losing their jobs or living in fear that they might be next, this post can best be described as narcissitic ramblings of someone coming from privilege. I am not seeking attention. If anything, the polarity of what’s going on outisde vs. inside makes me feel all-the-more shitty. I am truly grateful for my priviliges. But, I badly want to feel that unencumbered joy once again.