Tomorrow we will be getting the Halo Swaddle sleepsack to lock down his arms for good when he is sleeping. This will probably significantly improve quality of life, as traditional swaddling managed to stop the incessant crying twice today. We will be careful not to overuse it though, as the sacks have been described online as "heroin for babies."
One of the good sides of being stuck up all night watching a fitfully sleeping baby is random browsing on Amazon and the app store. I am going to have to try out this game that I found, "Never Have I Ever," whose tagline is "A game for people who make poor life decisions." Sounds accurate. Also entertaining was the coffee mug that reads "Good morning. I see the assassins have failed."
Starting with that, we delved deeper into the morass in the App Store. I downloaded several apps from the Learning Series, including Optics, Mechanics, Probability, Electromagnetism, etc. Along with several other math and physics references. Looking through some of the material, I am amazed at all the stuff we learn but never use.
I used to enjoy finding solutions to problems. My favorite ones were associated with data and image processing. Machine vision. Programming my own algorithms to find patterns that were not discernable to the eye. Figuring out new ways to process data. Making my own GUIs, and delighting in figuring out how to interface my crude MATLAB programs to manipulate files stored in more palatable formats to other engineers (e.g., EXCEL).
Then I went into project management. Big mistake. It's true, as a project manager you get exposure to a lot of things, some of them technical. Most of them personal (personnel?). But you don''t get your hands dirty. You don't get to solve the technical problems yourself. You can find a solution and suggest it to someone, but you don't get to carry it out.
I guess that's why I went in with Dave to start the tree business a while back. It was a chance to do some work. Get my hands dirty again. See some rather simple physics in practise. But now that's gone too, it got to be too much like real work.
Back to the "career." Each job has been shorter and shorter, so to keep on my current trend I would have to change jobs within a year. And to do that, I need to be applying now. Which I am. I figure I have about 20 years left in my "career." Therefore, at an average of a new job each year I have 20 tries left to find something that doesn't make me want to put two pens on the desk and make them disappear, Joker style.
It doesn't help that I get bored so easily. If I do the same task three times, I think I've had enough. Maybe it's a curse of the near-photographic memory. My brain says "been there, done that, move on . . . . " way too quickly.
But I know its more than that. I know that it's because I made the wrong decision. I left technical work. I should be in a lab somewhere, figuring things out. Not in a cubicle, pushing endless stacks of paper around in some macabre symphony of stress.
And then comes the rub. The pay. The fact is, bullshit pays. And the more ludicrous it gets, the higher the pay. I can never get paid the same wage to do technical work as I do to do whatever it is that I do now. Technical work has been relegated, while politically maneuvering and chicanery have been elevated.
Can you imagine what could be accomplished if performing actual work payed as well as bullshit?
I feel like I am starting to wake up from the drunken stupor of the past 10 years, both literally and figuratively. I bought into the ladder climbing crap. I believed the lie. Bought it hook, line, and sinker.
Now all I have to do is find a way to cut the line and swim free . . . . .
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