Dreaming…
As the months go by, my plans for the future grow even more vague. One might think that my reason for moving to the US is to chase the American Dream: house in the suburbs, car, wife and two-point-five children… socking away retirement money, paying off the mortgage…
That vision of my future seems more and more far-fetched every passing day.
Of course, there are the other, more likely scenarios. Years of working as a wage-slave, ekeing out a living from a tiny apartment. Single, alone, and dying of some disease, barely able to make the medical bills.
Or, you know, I could just hang it all and go back home. Get a PhD and go back to teaching and a reasonably secure job at the University. Try to get tenure this time.
I know, I’ve been here barely one year, and already I’m thinking of giving up. Giving in. Quitting the rat race and trying to make a go of my old life again.
Because there’s this nagging realization that I am too old to be trying to start on the bottom rung in the IT industry. In Silicon Valley, no less. Cutthroat competition for jobs, where the best and brightest computer people from all over the world come to ply their trade.
And I do not belong here. I am not the code monkey I used to be. I am discovering that my skills are not at the level they were when I was an undergraduate, when I was in graduate school. I am too old, and too slow, and I cannot stay awake for several days in a row anymore. Not even with the use of dangerous amounts of caffeine.
I am not the hot-shit computer geek I used to be. And I am realizing, that at the age of thirty-three, I am close to burning out. I am losing interest in the work I have been doing for over half my life.
Maybe it’s just stress. Maybe it’s just this particular job.
Disillusioned. Sorely in need of some new illusions.
I guess I just need something to keep me working, a little bit of hope that the future is going to be better than what I have now. Somehow, I don’t see that.
Somehow what I see most likely is that I push myself too hard, that I screw up so badly that I get my ass fired from this job. And I screw up so badly that the rest of my career is spent at one McJob or another.
So. Maybe I need to head it off at the pass. Maybe I need to consider other options.
Maybe its time I gave up IT and did something else for a living.
Maybe that’s too scary to contemplate. Maybe that’s my problem.
Maybe I just need some new dreams.
