Well, I’m finally back home and happy to be here. The above pic is what I look like after three months of traveling. The whole time I was overseas I didn’t bother to shave or cut my hair. Now that I’m home, I’m shaving it all off.
Last year I was playing soccer a lot with a group of my friends. The games were just informal pickup games, but we had a lot of fun. And it was great exercise. Then one of us, I don’t remember who, found out about a local soccer club. The club was just an amature soccer club, and the entrance requirements were pretty lax. Basically anyone who could get enough players together to form a team, could pay a fee and join up. That was it.
So we got our money together and picked a team from the best pickup players we had, and signed up. Now, none of us were really all that good. And we knew that. But the more we prepared for our first game, the better we convinced ourselves we were.
So our first game came up and we were excited. We got to the field and set up our stuff. Other friends and relatives showed up to cheer us on. We were sure we were going to do well.
Reality quickly stepped in. The other team literally ran circles around us. No matter what we tried, they kept scoring on us. And even worse, we couldn’t seem to score on them. When the game was finally over we hadn’t scored a single goal, but the other team had managed to score 19 goals! It turned out we weren’t anywhere near as good as we thought we were.
Over the course of the season, we did get better. And we never quit trying, but we also never managed to win a game. It just goes to show you that no matter how good you may be in your little sphere of influence, you are probably not as good as you think. Kind of a humbling thought, but at the same time good to recognize. That way, you won’t be surprised when you run up against a situation where that is made obvious.
Well, yesterday was my last day at Silver Bullet Technology. I would have posted this yesterday, but I was so busy trying to wrap things up on my projects, that I just didn’t have time. I ended up working pretty late Friday trying to leave projects in a state where other programmers can pick them up, and writing emails to those same coworkers describing last minute things that I had forgotten to tell them.
When you work for a small company for any length of time, you end up becoming the expert at way too many different systems and projects. So when you leave, it becomes a huge effort to pass on that knowledge to others. Especially if you don’t have a replacement to train. So my last two weeks at Silver Bullet involved a lot of documentation and process writing, as well as a lot of coding to wrap up projects.
I’m sorry to go, but it really was time for a change in my life. So I’m moving on. I still stay in contact with everyone at Silver Bullet, and I’ll still be available to them all via email or phone. But they won’t see me already there early in the morning, with the coffee already brewed. And I’ll miss having those first of the day discussions with each of my coworkers as they walk past my office.
We all wear them. We all hate them.
We try to look like we aren’t.
We say things we don’t mean.
We do things we don’t like.
All to maintain an image of ourselves that isn’t really us.
An image of ourselves that we don’t even like!
I hate masks and fakeness in people. And yet no matter how much I hate it in others, I find myself wearing masks all the time. I hate it in others and I’m one of the worst offenders.