This afternoon I was driving from point A to Point B when the title for this blog post popped into my mind. I usually write the post first and then try to find a suitable title, but every once in a while, I do the inverse. It took me a while to figure out what my brain was trying to tell me with this title. Eventually, I recalled a conversation I had last week about my career goals for the foreseeable future.
There was a time when I aspired to work my way up to a specific position in a particular organization. Like many things in my life, it was a stretch, but completely doable. Then, life threw a crossroad in front of me and I shifted directions. But, I still harbored hope that my aspiration was simply postponed, not lost.
I eventually found myself back on track to work towards that specific position, but things had changed. I had changed. And it no longer held the appeal it once did. In part because the organization had changed in the intervening period, but mostly because by then I had come up with the idea for CubeSpace and directed all of my energy to bring that idea to fruition.
Fast forward several years to the present day. CubeSpace is gone, and with it my aspirations for organizational leadership. It was an awesome,overwhelming, exhausting and exhilarating run. But I am done now. Professionally, I feel like I have reached a point where I would like to stay at cruising altitude for a while. Itis an incredibly freeing feeling. Instead of directing my time and energy upward, I have the opportunity to look at what is around me. And right now, I like what I see.
It took me a while and some personal resistance, but I am now ready to embrace the idea of becoming a full fledged web developer. No more hedging, qualifying everything I do in self-deprecating denial. I have put my toe in the water and I’m ready to fully immerse myself.
My coding skills aren’t where I want them to be. And knowing myself as I do, they never will be. No matter how good I get, I will want to keep getting better. Whether it is learning fun new hacks or entirely new languages, I don’t envision a time when I let myself get complacent. I’m just not built that way.
But, if I do become bored with web development in the far-flung future, that’s ok too. Because following inspiration means I get to just switch gears to whatever happens to excite me at the time. If that means I have to take two steps back to move one forward for a while, it won’t be the first time. Nor likely, the last.