Smackie the Frog

I have this real problem with jobs. It seems to happen around the same time, I’m noticing. After about 2 years at a given place, I start to get real antsy. And as it turns out, today is my 2 year anniversary here. And so guess what? Yep, I’m getting antsy.

I don’t know what to do about this. I guess I just need to tough it out. The job is fine, really. Not particularly intellectually stimulating, and my skills are going to waste, since we use ridiculously rare and outdated technology here. But it is a job, and right now it would be pretty difficult to find a job somewhere else. And maybe more importantly, I don’t think that it would solve anything. I think I’d just go someplace else and in a couple of years have all the same problems.

So I’m not sure what the answer is. Maybe I’m in the wrong profession. I don’t get a tremendous amount of joy from programming. At least not the stuff we do here. It is very monotonous. Basically doing the same thing over and over. I do enjoy learning new programming techniques, but more from a research and development side, as opposed to an implementation side. The actual interacting with end users and completing a project gives me very little satisfaction.

Then maybe I’m in the completely wrong field, but at this point I’m not really sure what to do about that. I can’t afford to take a pay cut to do something crazy, and so I guess I’m stuck. And maybe that is just part of being an adult. Being stuck doing something that you feel is slowly driving all the life and fun out of you so that you can afford to pay bills.

That part is definitely not explained in school.